7 .,, THE JOURNAL OF THE HISTORICAL
CTO 4 C7 f I ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHERN FLORIDA

Editor. Charlton W. Tebeau

NUMBER XXXIII 1973

CONTENTS
PAGE
Key Biscayne Base Marker-1855 3-16
By Arva M. Parks
Two Way Stretch: Some Dichotomies in the Advertising
of Florida as the Boom Collapsed 17-29
By Elliott Mackle
Martyrs All: The Hero of Key West and the Inocentes 31-39
By Jose B. Fernandez and Jerrell H. Shojner
Two South Florida Lighthouse Keepers 41-50
By Bessie Wilson DuBois
West Palm Beach 51-67
By Dora Doster Utz
The Port of Palm Beach: The Beakers Pier 69-74
By Sue Pope Burkhardt
James M. Jackson, Jr., Miami's First Physician 75-86
By William M. Straight, M.D.
List of Members 87-93
Officers and Directors 95

COPrruHT 1973 BY THE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHERN FLORIDA

te est',t: is published annually by the Historical Association of Southern Florida.
eI Communications should be addressed to the Corresponding Secretary
of the Society, 3290 South Miami Avenue, Miami, Florida 33129. The Association does
not assume responsibility for statements of fact or opinions made by contributors.

This Page Blank in Original
Source Document

Key Biscayne Base Marker-1855
By ARVA MOORE PARKS*
In the spring of 1970 personnel from the Dade County Parks Depart-
ment were in the process of clearing virgin land for a new county golf
course in the northwest corner of Crandon Park. In May, the clang of a
bulldozer blade against a large object caused bulldozer operator W. E.
Reed to stop his work and investigate. He discovered a large granite
"tombstone-like" object which was immediately reported to Dade County
Party Chief John Giffen. John Giffen called in J. C. Frazier, Field Survey
Supervisor of the Dade County Public Works Department, who not only
had the technical knowledge for this type of investigation, but also a keen
interest in the history of the area.
What the bulldozer hit was the capstone or top monument of Key
Biscayne North Base Marker, which had been placed there by the U.S.
Coast Survey team in 1855. It was a sixteen inch square, three foot high,
800 pound obelisk of light grey granite with carving on four sides. The
carving read: "U.S. Coast Survey-A. D. Bache, Superintendent-North
Base No. 7-1855." The overall impression was truly that of a high
quality, professionally done tombstone.
Upon further investigation the base of the marker was discovered ten
feet northeast of the cap stone. The base was a three foot square, twenty-
eight inch thick, 3,000 pound slab of granite, the top of which was flush
with the ground. In the center there was a copper plug about the size of a
dime with a cross in it.
Naturally the men were amazed to find this tonnage of granite in a
mangrove swamp hundreds of feet from the west shore of Key Biscayne.
But fortunately, professional surveyors had been called in the beginning
who not only appreciated what they had stumbled upon but had the
knowledge to put it back together again.
After careful re-alignment, they poured a four by four inch reinforced
concrete curb around the base of the cap stone in order to properly secure
it to the base. A recovery note was sent to the U.S. Coast and Geodetic

*Mrs. Robert L. Parks, President of the Historical Association of Southern Florida, con-
tinues her study of early Dade County.

TEQUESTA

Survey who in 1945 after reconnaissance of the area, had last reported
the monument "lost." Thus the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey had
"found" one of its missing base markers and historians had a new lead
to pursue in uncovering the early history of the area.
Because the Coast Survey was under the Federal Government, all
records of this project were preserved in the National Archives. Therefore,
a full investigation of the North Base Marker at Key Biscayne was possible.

The U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey began in 1807 when President
Jefferson authorized a survey to be made of the coasts of the United States.
In 1816 the first "Superintendent of Survey of the Coast," F. R. Hasler
was appointed in the Treasury Department. Although the early years of
the survey were marked by confusion and lack of funds, by 1836 it had
become a well organized branch of the Treasury Department.'
In 1843, Professor Alexander Dallas Bache, great grandson of Benjamin
Franklin, and well known in scientific circles was appointed Superintendent
of the Coast Survey. Under his direction the undertaking assumed greater
proportions and the practical value of the survey was thoroughly demon-
strated.2
The Coast Survey was accomplished through triangulation. Triangula-
tion consists of a system of connected triangles with all angles carefully
observed, but with only an occasional length actually measured on the
ground. Eeach measured length is known as a base. By use of these
measured angles and bases the length of all other sides of the connected
triangles may be computed by trigonometry. If the latitude and longitude
of one point are known together with the azimuth to one of the other
stations, the latitudes and longitudes of all other points and the azimuths
of all other lines may also be derived.3
The first step in setting up the measurement of a base for triangulation
is reconnaissance to determine the best location for such a base. The
reconnaissance of the South Florida Coast was delayed by the Second
Seminole War (1835-1842), when much of South Florida was threatened
by the Seminole Indians. The uncharted "Great Florida Reef" was such a
serious hazard to shipping that it became a priority item for triangulation
as soon as practicable.

In January, 1849, Assistant Superintendent F. H. Gerdes began the
reconnaissance of the Florida Keys and Reef from the head of "Key Bis-
cayne Bay" to the Tortugas. His report included a description of the main-
land, every key and a list of the most dangerous places on the reef. This
early description provides an interesting and previously unpublished ac-
count of the area. He wrote:
The Southern part of Florida as is well known consists chiefly
of Everglades or vast and enormous water praries. The bottom
of most places when I entered the Glades, had a rocky founda-
tion and was covered only silghtly with soft soil, the thickness of
which did not exceed 6 inches, apparently of an alluvial nature.
The depth of water varied from 1 to 4 feet and the water was
fresh drinkable and of a brownish color. Numerous hammocks
or patches of elevated ground lay all over the Glades like islands
in a bay; they are from 1 to 3 feet above the water, thickly
covered with wood and exceedingly fertile.

Around the Everglades along the Atlantic Coast as well as on
the branch of the Gulf towards the Florida Keys runs a belt of
solid ground to the extent of 8 or 10 miles in bredth, [sic]
bordering the Glades on the inside. It is generally thickly wood-
ed, the soil is barren and stoney on some places rocky. Marshes
extend for a few miles along the coast, and some hammocks and
fertile spots are found at several projecting points. Among the
latter the hunting grounds4 occupy the first place. Here cultiva-
tion has very sparsely begun through the - - of the soil in
sugar, rice, corn, limes, oranges and olives, etc. was very rich.
On the Miami River are also some small plantations that seem-
ed before the late Indian outbreak to thrive well. For 5 or 6
miles to the E. from Cape Sable the country is also very produc-
tive and here along is open and consists of well watered prarie
land, intermixed with fine groves of trees. The stoney and barren
tracts along the coast are covered chiefly with Pine growth, the
ground in general is plentifully filled with arrow-root bushes
called in this section by the Indian name of Coonty. This is a
product, which is little used as yet, but which I presume will
become in time a source of wealth to the land owners. The

4The "Hunting Grounds" usually referred to what today is considered South Dade and
the term "Little Hunting Grounds" referred to the Coconut Grove area. At this time,
however it referred to th entire mainland from South of the Miami River to South Dade.
A. D. Bache, Supervisor. Notes on the Coast of the United States (Washington: 1861).
Record Group 23, p. 64.

ARVA M. PARKS

navigable streams from the Glades to the Bay of Florida with
water power of generally 4 or 5 feet fall will facilitate the manu-
facturing of the article. It grows in very gerat abundance and is
of an excellent quality, perfectly equal to the Bermuda Arrow-
root, and can be delivered with large profits for ten cents per
pound when the imported article sells here in the country for
60 or 75 cts.

Above Cape Florida there runs out of the Everglades into Key
Biscayne Bay, a stream called the Boca Routes, and a few miles
below the Little River, the Arch Creek and the Miami River fall
into the same water all constantly discharging the contents of the
glades into the bay. Some 10 or 13 miles below the Miami, near
the Hunting grounds is Little Creek and further down another
small stream without a name. From here to Cape Sable the shore
is uninterrupted. I ran a line of levels along the Miami, which
will show the fall and other features of the river and country.

The mainland of Florida above said cape (Cape Florida)
runs down into a sharp point from the head of Key Biscayne
Bay to Narrows Cut which separates it from Virginia Key, the
most northern of the Florida Keys . This spit is in fact the
first island itself, and ought to be counted as such. It is covered
with wood, has a fine beach and is about 8 or 10 miles long
and one half or one mile wide.
Virginia Key-about 3 miles long and 1 mile wide, a wooded
area with a fine Atlantic beach; Southern passage called Bear
Cut with 4 feet water.

Key Biscayne-Southern Point called Cape Florida, having a
lighthouse, 5 miles long, from 1 to 2 wide, with a fine Atlantic
beach and a strip of open land along side covered with palmettos,
etc., the rest wooded. The Southern inlet (Key Biscayne inlet)
has a swash channel over the reef with 10 ft. water. W. or S.W.
of the island is an excellent anchorage and harbor, From here
to the Miami 8 feet may be carried.5

After Gerdes completed his reconnaissance he selected two sites as the
best location for a base to begin triangulation. One was at Cape Sable, and
the other at Key Biscayne. In December, 1849 he began a preliminary

5"Extract from the Report of Assistant F. H. Gerdes to the Superintendent of the Coast
Survey on the reconnaissance of the Florida Keys," 1850, Record Group 23, pp. 840-42.

TEQUESTA

clearing and measurement of the Cape Florida Base on Key Biscayne.
The South end of the base line was located near the tip of the key and
was marked with crude stone monument, which consisted of five limestones
cut ten inches square by twenty inches long. Two were laid underground,
two others over the same nearly under the surface, and one on top. The
top one had one exact point marked by a leaded bar firmly inserted in a
drilled hole. A hill of earth was built up around the whole monument. It
was also at this point that J. E. Hilgard, Gerdes' assistant, built a tripod
and set up an astronomical and magnetic station to begin observations for
latitude and azimuth and moon culminations for longitude.

The north point of the base was 3 Vs miles away and was marked by a
coral screwpile inserted four or five feet deep in which a pole was inserted
to serve as a signal. Much of the line was over water-probably to avoid
clearing the land as much as possible.

From this base preliminary triangulation was begun. Forty-five signals
were put up embracing all the points required from Bear Cut to the Miami
River Southward to Card Sound. Seven stations were occupied, 210 angles
(of six repetitions each) were measured with a six inch Gambey theodilite
and twenty-seven stations were observed upon.6
On December 19, 1849 Gerdes wrote to Professor Bache to keep him
abreast of his progress. In it he drew a sketch of the area in order to
explain how he planned to set up signals on the reef for triangulation.
Two names were mentioned on the mainland as a site where occupied
signals would be constructed. "Beasley's" referred to the home site of
Edmund D. Beasley, the first settler in what later became Coconut Grove,
and "Dubose" to John Dubose the first lighthouse keeper at Cape Florida
who returned to the area after the second Seminole War and lived
near what was called "Elliot's Beach" which is in the present Gables
Estates area.7 Both of these men were probably those referred to in the
reconnaissance report of 1849 who had cultivated land in the "Hunting
Grounds."
All the work in 1849-50 was considered preliminary in nature with
final measurement to come at a later date. But in the meantime this
triangulation was used as the basis for all maps of the area. In the Superin-
tendent's Report for 1850, Professor Bache urged that work on "one of the

6"From the St. Mary's River to St. Joseph's Bay, Coast of Florida, and Including the
Florida Reef and Keys," 1850, Record Group 23, pp. 183-98.
7Letter, L. H. Gerdes to A. D. Bache, December 19, 1849, "Coast Survey Correspondence
with Civil Assistants, Extra Observers and Superintendents Party," Vol. 3, 1849, Record
Group 23.

ARVA M. PARKS

most important and dangerous parts of the United Coast"' be given
priority status and a double appropriation, until the reef and keys were
properly surveyed. In the previous five years over a million dollars worth
of vessels and cargoes had been wrecked annually on this coast.9

In early 1851 Gerdes and party returned to Key Biscayne. He completed
a topographical survey of Key Biscayne and made the decision to move
the North Base marker to the north and west of the 1849 site. The 1849
South Base was retained because it was also being used as a magnetic
station.

The new line commenced "from the South between the blacksmith shop
of the lighthouse keeper and the lighthouse, leaving nine feet to the right
and twelve feet to the left side and nowhere touches the thicket of wood
to any considerable extent. The shore remains forty yards from the line
. . the soil in the site is sandy and generally more solid, than in other
parts of the island. The northern terminus is a hammock of wood on a
dry sandy patch about seventy-five yards from the shore line of N.W.
Creek and nearly one-half mile from the signal N.W. point."10

A large scaffold was constructed at the South Base, range flags were
placed in the palmettos and woods and all impediments to a line of sight
were cleared, From this initial observation Gerdes decided that there were
no obstacles that could not be overcome. It would not be easy, however,
to cut through palmetto, "cabbage tree roots," about a mile of dense
mangrove, twenty small hills and as many low places. Gerdes wrote that
he "almost despaired . but in the face of all these objections there
remained no alternative . this to be the only site on the key, but with
perserverance ... the line could be made a tolerable good one.""

Gerdes left for Key West in order to find some one to take a contract to
effect the clearing.12 He found Key West booming and because of this
could find no one to take the contract for less than $1,000, which was
twice as much as he had budgeted. He decided to hire day workers and
superintendent the work himself.

S"From the St. Mary's River to St. Joseph's Bay," p. 183.
91bid.
O1Letter, L. H. Gerdes to A. D. Bache, April, 1851, pp. 3-4. "Correspondence and Reports
of Gerdes relating to the preparing, clearing, grading and ditching of the base line at
Cape Florida," February-April, 1851, Record Group 23.
I11bid., p. 5.
lZAccording to the 1850 Census there were under a hundred residents in Dade County
which at the time was almost four times its present size. Therefore, all labor had to come
from Key West. (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Seventh Census
of the United States, Dade County, Florida, 1850).

TEQUESTA

In late February Gerdes returned to the Cape with fourteen men who
reluctantly began the tedious clearing-"a rather unknown and not very
pleasant occupation to Key West laborers, who in fact are only acquainted
with fishing and wrecking."13
One month later, the ten foot wide line through the wilderness was
cleared. Hundreds of cords of palmetto roots were piled along the line and
partially burnt. When the northern terminus was reached a screwpile was
inserted by means of a capstan four feet deep and a "handsome" signal
of thirty-six feet was erected with a red and white painted barrel in the
socket.

The whole line was then carefully chained giving a distance of 5800
meters from signal to signal. It was ready for measurement, which Gerdes
cautioned should take place as soon as possible because of the rapid
tropical growth.14 For the moment the whole line had the appearance of
a "beautiful road running through brushwood."15

For some erason preparation for final measurement did not begin until
late 1854. At this time Professor Bache sent a series of memoes to Mr.
Gerdes to complete information for the forth coming measurement. From
them a great deal of information about the area can be obtained.
Mr. Gerdes indicated that even though a narrow channel of eight feet
existed to the south-east of the Cape, it would be foolish to attempt entry
into the bay without a qualified pilot. There was no wharf on the key but
good anchorage could be found on the lee side of the island near the tip.
Here a suitable camp could be set up with little difficulty. If needed, two
rooms were available at the keeper's house. He emphasized the importance
of bringing mosquito nets for every man.
Gerdes wrote that water was available from the keeper's cistern or
could be obtained from the "falls" of the Miami River. Wood was plentiful
on the beaches or in the hammocks. Some vegetables and provisions
could be obtained from the mainland. Fish, turtles and game were very
plentiful in the area.16
It is interesting to note that Gerdes questioned the advisability of using
the heavy granite monument at the North Base where the land was some-

13Letter, L. H. Gerdes to A. D. Bache, April, 1851, Record Group 23, p. 7.
141bid., p. 9.
15"Remarks on the two Base Lines for the U.S. Coast Survey in Florida at Cape Florida
and Cape Sable," 1851, Record Group 23, p. 239.
16"Correspondence, Reports, Sketches of Gerdes Relating to the Measurement of the
Florida Bases at Cape Sable and Cape Florida," 1855, Record Group 23, p. 236.

ARVA M. PARKS

what marshy. He believed the South Base location to be an excellent site
for a heavy granite structure.'17

In January, 1855, arrangements for the trip began. The schooner
Graham was acquired in Baltimore and a small scow for landing equipment
was put aboard. Arrangements were made to have the Graham fitted for
sea as early as possible,

A month later the granite blocks for the Cape Florida base were placed
on board the Graham as were four wagon loads of equipment-shovels,
spades, grubbing hoes, medicine, pistols and supplies. Including the cap-
tain, Mr. Martin, and the men employed in Baltimore, nineteen hands
were on board. The sail was delayed for a few days because of the ex-
treme cold weather and ice in the dock. Finally, on February 22, the
schooner Graham left for St. John's River, Florida to await further orders,

Meanwhile the base measurement apparatus was transferred to a rail-
road car in Portsmouth, N.H. and sent southward to Charleston where on
March 7th it was transferred to a steamer heading for the St. John's River.

On March 11th all efforts came together at Mayport Mills on the St.
John's. Thomas McDonnell, artificer and H. Prenot, mechanic arrived to
help in the transfer of the base apparatus to the Graham which had arrived
from Baltimore on March 2. Mr. Boutelle and Mr. Sullivan took up their
quarters on board the schooner with Mr. Boutelle in charge of the
operation.

After a tedious voyage the schooner made the Cape Florida Light at
1:00 A.M. on Friday, March 23. Two other schooners, the Florida and
the Joseph Henry were already there. A pilot came out to bring the
Graham around to safe anchorage,

Lieutenant James Totten, U.S.A., Assistant U.S. Coast Survey had
arrived previously on the lighthouse schooner Florida and had already
begun the clearing of the line. The 1851 line had been completely over-
grown. By this time he had cleared only one and one-half miles so there
was much work to be done. Mr. Boutelle was greatly concerned about the
unusually long voyage from Mayport Mills which had delayed their arrival.
Superintendent Bache himself was expected to arrive shortly to supervise
the operation.

17"Remarks on the Two Base Lines," p. 240.

TEQUESTA

For the next week the men were busy clearing the line, making com-
parisons and generally setting up for Bache's arrival. Two days were almost
lost when a "severe" storm interrupted the work. The day (April 1) fol-
lowing the storm the temperature dropped to 55 giving the men more
discomfort.
During the unexpected storm the scow which contained the granite
North Base Marker was swamped and almost sunk. Only quick action by
the men saved it.
On Monday, April 2 Professor Bache and his wife, Mr. Fairman
Rogers, volunteer aid from Philadelphia and others arrived on the steamer
Corwin which anchored near Fowey Rock. Their baggage was brought
ashore and they joined the others in the camp. The schooner Bowditch
which accompanied the Corwin was brought around to the lee anchorage
joining the three schooners already there.
By this time there were five large ships anchored off of Key Biscayne
and over forty men and one woman in residence there. This undoubtedly
was the largest contingent of civilians ever assembled in the area. In the
next few days the revenue cutter Sea Drift arrived to join the group and
the mail boat Isabel passed by on its monthly mail run.8"
Professor Bache immediately took charge of the comparisons of the
measuring bars with the standard.
The system of measuring by the U.S. Coast Survey at this time was a
refinement of a very ancient method of determining long distances. The
Egyptians had used lengths of rope which naturally stretched and shrank
with varying humidity. The early Europeans had come up with the idea of
rods of wood, well dried and tipped with metal which were used in pairs
laid on the ground, butted one against the other and alternately leap-
frogged ahead along a line. These rods were 16.5 feet long-variously
called rods or perches and are still the basis of English land measurement,
i.e. 320 rods = 5280 feet = 1 mile.
At this time the Gunters chain was in existence, it being made of 100
short links of wire totaling 66 feet or 4 rods. Its chief weakness lay in the
fact that at each loop of the 100 links there was a point of friction and
therefore it was subject to wear and consequent lengthening of the total
chain after use over any length of time.
To overcome this weakness the Coast Survey had in effect dropped back
to a more ancient method of measurement; namely tubes of metal, six
meters long and tipped with agate to circumvent wear on the ends.

Two of these tubes were used in the actual measurement but in order to
keep control over their length, a standard bar was kept at the camp, care-
fully padded and protected in a long wooden box. A very stable bench or
trestle was set up in camp and by a rather complicated set of clamps,
mirrors and screws, a great number of comparisons were made between
the standard and the tubes used in the field. Temperatures were vital to
these comparisons as well as to the actual measurements in the field since
the tubes, being made of metal, were subject to expansion and con-
traction. 19
When the comparisons were completed the measuring apparatus was
put on board the schooner Bowditch and taken to anchorage off the site of
the North Base Marker. A path was cleared from the shore line to the site
and preparation for setting the North Base Monument began.
A line was celared from signal to signal for a width of sixteen feet,
eleven to the west of the chained line and five to the east. A four foot
section, two feet on each side of the line was carefully grubbed and graded.
On Monday, April 9, 1855 with chaining completed and the North Base
Monument in place, measurement began.

The actual measurement began at the North Base and was in all respects
a major operation. The tubes were laid on movable trestles, carefully butted
one against the other, clamped and alternately moved forward down the
line, each movement forward entailed moving rear trestle and tube for-
ward. In addition to moving tubes and trestles, a straight line had to be
maintained with an instrument, levels taken at each butting of the tubes
and temperatures recorded for each tube length. When moving a tube for-
ward extreme care was necessary to not bump the trestle or tube remaining
in place or the whole operation was in trouble.
At breakfast and dinner time and at the end of a day's work, solid stakes
were driven under the ends of the last three tube lengths to give three
points to start the operation again. Under this system any accidents in
operation would entail the loss of a half-day maximum.
In order to control the operation and get all men working as a team a
quasi-military set of commands was devised by which all operations were
done "by the numbers."20
Thirteen men were employed in the actual measurement of the base.
Four men were tube bearers, four trestle and plate bearers, four assisting

201hid,
I 9James C. Frazier, Field Survey Supervisor, Metropolitan Dade County, Public Works
Department

TEQUESTA

in the leveling and arranging of advance trestles and one keeping the plate
frame in line and preparing the ground with a hoe for the plates.
The average workday began at 5:00 A.M. with a break for breakfast at
about 8:30 and "dinner" about 1:00 P.M. There was between seven and
eight hours of work a day. The temperature ranged from a low of 550 to
a high of 86', the latter being described as "quite oppressive." At one point
Mr. Boutelle succumbed to the heat and had to go back to camp to recover.
The topography of the island was carefully recorded as each day's
measurement progressed. It consisted mostly of either sandy soil or low
marsh. The vegetation on the path was almost exclusively dwarf palmetto,
mangrove and sea grape-except for a few coconut trees surrounding the
light keeper's dwelling that he had planted.
On Wednesday, April 18th at 5:45 P.M. the South Base signal was
reached. Nine hundred sixty-five tubes had been used for a distance of
3.597 miles between the two points.21 On the following day the South Base
Monument was put into place. A detailed description of this procedure
was recorded but there is no similar record for the North Base Monument.
However, the two monuments were exactly alike so it can be assumed that
the North Base Monument was put in place in the same manner.
After the South Base Mark was verified the old pieces of concrete that
served as the old monument were removed and a hole dug six feet wide by
two feet deep. With the old marker removed two sectors were carefully
centered over the points in the copper bolts north and west of the line and
a plumb line suspended from a movable tripod was made to coincide with
the intersection of the lines of sight.
A hole about two feet deep was dug to receive the granite post that
would mark the station below the surface. A half barrel was fixed in the
hole and the five inch square twenty inch long granite post was placed in
its center and the space around it filled with sand and rammed tight.
After this was set nine inches of sand were put on top of it to serve as
support for the heavy granite blocks that would support the monument.
The existing scaffolding placed there was strengthened, a tackle rigged
and the two heavy granite blocks were lowered into the bed of sand. Each
stone was forty inches long, 38.5 inches wide and fifteen inches thick.
The next day when the stones had settled a hole was drilled and a copper
bolt inserted thus marking the south end of the base. Upon the dressed

With most of the work completed at Key Biscayne many of the men
left for the next order of business-the measurement of the Cape Sable
Base. A few remained to finish marking the three mile posts of granite that
were 21A feet long and nine inches square, dressed down to a square of
six inches on top.

The day the measurement was completed, the officers from Ft. Dallas,
located on the north bank of the Miami River visited the scene. Before he
left, Bache, Lieutenant Totten and Mr. Rogers visited "Miami"--pre-
sumably the garrison at Ft. Dallas.21

By Sunday, April 22, lighthouse keeper Dr. Fletcher and his family had
the island back to themselves. One month later Charles Baron became
lighthouse keeper and the Fletchers moved permanently to the south bank
of the Miami River where Dr. Fletcher opened a store.24 A short time
later however, Lieutenant Totten returned to measure the angles resulting
from the new base line.

It is somewhat ironic that Gerdes' warning about the inadvisability of
the heavy granite marker at the North Base because of the unstable con-
ditions of the ground could prove to be so incorrect. It was the site selec-
tion of the South Base Marker that proved to be a mistake. As early as
1883 when a coast survey team was again in the area for re-triangulation,
the South Base Marker was already in three feet of water, three feet off
shore. At this time the North Base Marker was still in good condition.25
The discovery of the North Base Marker has given South Florida an-
other tangible piece of evidence to prove the considerable activity that did
occur in the area before the coming of the railroad in 1896. Next to the
lighthouse, the North Base Marker is the oldest documented man-made
object in its original location in the Miami area.

23"Key Biscayne Base. Abstract of Journal," pp. 109-110. Ft. Dallas which was established
in 1836 was re-opened on January 3, 1855 because of the impending outbreak of war
with the Seminoles for the third time. Scouting parties operated from Ft. Dallas before
the tctual beginning of the war in December, 1855. (The initial period of occupation was
1836-41. It was briefly re-opened in 1849-50). At the same time the Coast Survey was
taking place on Key Biscayne the troops at the Miami River were likewise engaged in
feverish activity. Between February and July, 1855 the two stone buildings started by
William English in the 1840's were completed by the Army. One of these buildings has
been moved and is preserved in Miami's Lummus Park. (Letter, St. Lewis Morris to
Quartermaster General U.S., Major General, Jesup, Washington, D.C., July 1, 1855,
Record Group 698.)
July 1, 1855, Record Group 698.
24Mrs. A. C. Richards, "Reminiscences," circa 1903, Clippings. Dr. Fletcher and his family
played an active role in the development of Miami in this era. Their home was located
next to the present Miami Ave. bridge where they operated a store and boat to Key West.
25Letter, J. E. Hilgard, Superintendent to 0. H. Tittman, Assistant, February 28, 1883,
Record Group 23.

TEQUESTA

BIBLIOGRAPHY
The National Archives
Record Group 23
Census of the United States. Florida, Dade County, 1850.
"Coast Survey Correspondence with Civil Assistants, Extra Observers and
Superintendents Party," Vol. 3, 1849.
"Correspondence, Reports, Sketches of Gerdes Relating to the Measure-
ment of the Florida Bases at Cape Sable and Cape Florida," 1855.
"Extract from the Report of Assistant F. H. Gerdes to the Superintendent
of the Coast Survey on the Reconnaisance of the Florida Keys," 1850.
"From the St. Mary's River to St. Joseph's Bay, Coast of Folrida and In-
cluding the Florida Reef and Keys," 1850.
"Horizontal Control Data, Special Publication No. 227," (Revised 1957)
U.S. Department of Commerce, 1961.
"Key Biscayne Base. Abstract of Journal," 1855.
"Key Biscayne Base. Setting of the Monument, South End," 1855.
Notes on the Coast of the United States (Washington: 1861), A. D. Bache,
Supervisor.
"Registration of Record Group 23, Records of the Coast and Geodetic
Survey," (Mimeographed), May 6, 1968.
"Remarks on the Two Base Lines for the U.S. Coast Survey in Florida
at Cape Florida and Cape Sable," 1851.
Interviews
Dr. James C. Covington
James C. Frazier
Letters
J. E. Hilgard, Superintendent to 0. H. Tittman, Assistant, February
28, 1883.
St. Lewis Morris to Quartermaster General U.S., Major General Jesup,
Washington, D.C., July 1, 1855. Record Group 698.
Books
Johnson, Allen, ed. "Alexander Dallas Bache." Dictionary of American
Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928.
Maps
U.S. Coast Survey, Key Biscayne, Florida. Topography by the party under
the command of Hull Adams, U.S.C.S., 1851.
Topographical Sketch of Key Biscaine [sic.] with the Cape Florida Base
Line, circa, 1851.
Clippings
Richards, Mrs. A. C. "Reminiscences." Circa, 1903.

TEQUESTA

TWO-WAY STRETCH:

Some Dichotomies in the Advertising of Florida

as the Boom Collapsed
By ELLIOTT MACKLE*
The Florida land boom began to collapse in the fall of 1925. By the end
of October the crash was inevitable. The boom depended upon a continued
influx of people and capital from out of state. Deprived of constantly in-
creasing amounts of money to support rises in the price of options on
land, boomers and developers would be reduced to taking in each other's
financial washing. Land prices would fall and the speculative bubble
would burst.' During the summer of 1925, however, critics in the North
opened a campaign against the boom and the post-war migration to
Florida. Newspapers carrying the advertisements of boomers and de-
velopers began charging the same advertisers with decimation of whole
cities through fraud and misrepresentation.2 These charges contributed
to the boom's collapse but were not the sole cause.
On October 29 the railroads serving Florida declared a general embargo
on further acceptance of freight for transport south of Jacksonville. The
embargo had been placed on freight to Miami on August 18. Until
early the following year only foodstuffs or goods for which a special permit
had been obtained were accepted for shipment. Since 1919 railroad traffic
and earnings within the state-like real estate transfers, building permits
issued, and bank clearings-had shown a general upward trend. Business
activity declined each summer from a spring peak, rose again in the fall
months, rose further during the winter, peaked again and declined, gen-
erally increasing annually as the boom grew. In 1925, anticipating the
usual summer decline, the railroads concentrated their efforts upon laying
additional track. Business declined only slightly, however, and freight
accumulated at Jacksonville and at other points. Much of the freight
consisted of building materials for use in fueling the boom in the south.
Without continued construction of new buildings a collapse of boom-time
speculative prices was unavoidable.3

*Elliott Mackle received B.A. and MA. degrees from the University of Miami. He is now
at Emory University writing a doctoral dissertation on utopian communal experiments in
Florida.
iHomer B. Vanderblue, "The Florida Land Boom," Journal of Land and Public Utility
Economics III (1927) pp. 114-120.
2Phillip E. DeBerard, Jr., "Promoting Florida: Some Aspects of the Uses of Advertising
and Publicity in the Development of the Sunshine State" (Unpublished M.A. thesis,
University of Florida, 1951) pp. 65-66.

ELLIOTT MACKLE

The collapse should not have been entirely unexpected. A few astute
analysts noted a downward business trend in September and October of
1925 and predicted a fall in prices. Most observers and nearly all boomers,
however, predicted that the general trend upward would continue.4
Although many factors contributed to the growth of the boom, promo-
tion and national advertising were among the principal means of attracting
visitors and capital to the state. As the boom neared collapse, the pro-
moters, attempting to offset the shocks of 1925 and thus keep the bubble
expanding, increased the use of these devices. An advertising journal noted
at the time that high-pressure salesmanship was almost unnecessary in
Florida. New arrivals were usually so caught up in the land-and-money
excitement that they needed merely to be shown where and how the most
potentially profitable options on land might be easily obtained.5 National
advertising designed to lure visitors and their money to Florida was there-
fore more important, and usually more sophisticated in composition, than
the local ads which merely invited buyers across the street. Because both
were complementary products calculated to appeal to a broad range of
persons, both offer suggestions for evaluating the boom, the nineteen-
twenties, and the national character.
The boom may be seen as an extension (or distension) of beliefs widely
held by Americans of the 'twenties: that prosperity would continue and
that get-rich-quick schemes often produced what they promised. The
boom was built on speculation, on an assumption that prices would con-
tinue to rise. This assumption was a calculated risk for a few, a gamble at
uncertain odds for most. But the majority of Americans, although by
tradition reverent of profit and financial multiplication, have never satis-
factorily resolved a conflict between fascination with and distrust of
gambling. The wager, whether on sure thing or long shot, is opposed by
the dominant work-ethic of the Puritans. The promoters of the boom
were thus caught in an ambiguous situation.
Typical newspaper and magazine advertising placed by firms, indi-
viduals, and cities interested in maintaining the boom's momentum during
the fall and winter of 1925-26 reflect this ambiguity. Nearly every adver-
tisement published out of state, and many published within it, contains
a dichotomy in the overall message presented. Such dichotomy or ambi-

valence results in a number of tensions: between opposing messages within
the ad, between reader and advertisement, between advertiser and adver-
tisement. The following survey of representative ads will suggest the
ambivalent attitudes of many Americans and will show that the resulting
dichotomies appeared in a variety of modes.

Sound Investments, Capital Gains

The most common dichotomy in the advertising of Florida during the
period is that between the safety of investment and the possibility of
enormous capital appreciation and profit. The boom caused huge revenues
to pour into relatively secure businesses such as banks, railroads, and
hotels. But the primary profits of the boom, both realized and on paper,
were the result of gambling upon continued rapid rises in the price of land.
This phenomenon had little in common with investing in gilt-edged securi-
ties. Yet most developers, recognizing the national ambivalence toward
gambling, could not boldly offer their speculations for what they were.
Many advertisers of Florida investments therefore attempted to have it
both ways, advertising their schemes as blue-chip stock and as speculative
risk. They hoped by this to allay the fears of conservative investors while
at the same time attracting the vast amounts of capital necessary to the
continuation of the boom.

The Coral Gables Corporation, probably the single largest advertiser
of Florida real estate during the period, offers the best example of this
dichotomous approach. The corporation's ads represent the most sophisti-
cated (and expensive) attempt at resolution of the opposing attractions
of security and colossal appreciation. One ad in a November, 1925, series
directed toward readers in Georgia claims that:

In Coral Gables there is added to [the] powerful lure of the
tropics two other factors that are making this beautiful city cele-
brated throughout the country-security and profit in investment.
. Coral Gables property has been steadily rising in value.
Some of it has shown a 100 percent increase every year. All
authorities agree that the greatest advance is yet to come.6
"An investment at Coral Gables," runs another ad in the series,

is as safe as a gilt-edge bond. For it has as security the countless
millions already spent in building this marvelous spot into a

6Atlanta Constitution, November 1, 1925. In the interests of brevity and clarity I have
altered the original order of sentences in this and the following two ads cited; the ad
copy in each is considerably longer and more repetitive.

ELLIOTT MACKLE

thriving growing city ... What the millions spent in the last few
years have achieved cannot compare with what the coming
growth promises. Already more than $40,000,000 further are
pledged for new developments . Each of the buildings as
they are erected are just so many coupons that you might clip
as profit on your investment.7
This curious emphasis on pledged millions sounds a speculative note,
particularly so because the copy makes clear that future development
depends upon continued building and sale of land. Coral Gables was,
nevertheless, not an undrained section of swamp but a partly-built city,
and the ad continues with the message that "Coral Gables is an actuality,
not a dream; an assured success, not a speculation." More blatant, more
reliant upon an appeal to the speculator's greed, but equally an attempt
to resolve the dichotomy between safety and risk is a third ad in the series:
Each generation has its Opportunities to make its millions!
Coral Gables . Miami . Florida . [elipses in copy] is
the opportunity of this generation . Land values have increas-
ed in this Miracle City of the South as much as 922 percent in
one year! .. Ordinary building lots have brought profits of over
100 percent in less than six months . Internationally famous
men such as B. C. Forbes, Arthur Brisbane, Livermore, Unter-
meyer and a score of others regard Florida real estate as the
opportunity of a lifetime.'

Two months later a Miami broker offered lots in Coral Gables to local
readers at "50% Below Market." Although prices were falling and the
broker was attempting to unload his holdings he relied upon the formula
which the Coral Gables Corporation had so successfully employed: "Here
Is One of Those Opportunities That Allow You an Immense Return On
Your Investment In a Short Time-With Absolute Safety."9

Advertisements for bonds and other obligations secured by South Florida
properties and municipalities also reflect the dichotomy between secure
investment and unusual profit. Investment houses advertising such securi-
ties in December, 1925, offered them with a return of eight percent.
Similar securities backed by northern property paid only six percent. An
element of risk corollary to the higher return on the Florida securities
might therefore be implied. Not so, the ads pledge: safe investment and un-

usually high return. Thus one investment house offers the readers of Time
magazine a booklet entitled "2% to 4% Extra" which will, the ad
promises, reveal how the advertisers had assisted one client in gaining
$7,208 in principal and an increase in income of $1,077. The ad is also
notable for its illustration: a Spanish galleon sails across Biscayne Bay
toward Miami, the city radiant in an aurora of light. The clear implica-
tion is that Miami is El Dorado. Although the discovery of that legendary
city had long been thought to be both dangerous and insurmountably diffi-
cult, the ad promises that there is "no risk.""' Similar ads placed earlier
in the year offer eight percent investments secured by property in Miami
"where money earns big wages . double your money in 9 years" and a
booklet entitled "8% and Safety."'1

Two variations of the spectacular-profits-at-no-risk message may be
found in the national advertising of the period. The first, employed ex-
tensively but not exclusively by advertisers of the Palm Beach-to-Miami
Gold Coast, is the assertion that the so-called boom is built upon such
safe foundations that it is really no boom at all. Such ads are intended
to simultaneously boom the area and answer northern critics. The second
variation, used primarily by developers and speculators located away from
the Gold Coast, employs the admission that indeed there is a boom, and a
dangerously speculative one at that, but that it is confined to areas other
than that advertised. Perfect safety, the ads claim, is assured the investor
who purchases land or sinks capital into the advertised locale or develop-
ment. The value of this land will surely rise.

A November, 1925, ad by the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce
illustrates the first variation. Palm trees, tall buildings, yachts, and a bath-
ing beauty bestriding a globe labeled "The World's Greatest Winter
Resort" frame copy listing public and private investments and improve-
ments in Dade County. In reaction to charges that the Florida boom is a
fraudulent bubble, the copy punctuates each listing of railway investments,
each enumeration of new hotels, each projection of tourist visitation with a
refrain on the theme of "Does that look like a bubble?"12 Ads run the
same month by the Miami Real Estate and Building Company claim that
the city's recent building activity "surpasses any similar growth the world
has ever known" and point out that "students of Economics and sound
business men base the stability of any real estate activity on the amount of
building activity which accompanies the land boom." The office buildings,

hotels, apartments and causeways already erected in Miami should, one ad
concludes, "firmly convince you that the city of Miami is building its
golden future on a lasting foundation of cement and steel. Miami is build-
ing for permanence.""'

Hollywood-by-the-Sea also emphasizes the permanent nature of its
recreational and residential facilities: "$30,000,000 worth of buildings com-
pleted or under construction," 1,000 homes, a bank, a fully-staffed school,
golf links, a bathing casino, churches, a woman's club, three hotels, a
"colored town for servants," and four years of corporate existence as of
October, 1925.14 The city of Lakeland, far to the northwest of the Gold
Coast, advertises itself as "Opportunity's Year 'Round Playground." One
ad features a dialogue between two golfers:

"What do you think of Florida investments?" "On the whole,
I think they're good. Particularly right here in Lakeland. I'm a
banker and naturally conservative . Use vision and judgment,
and almost anything you touch here should show a substantial
profit in a very short time."15

The Coral Gables Corporation consistently features the steel and con-
crete underpinnings of a golden future. Castles in Spain are now available
in Coral Gables, the ads run, whether you prefer a modest castle or a
stately home; the city, planned for harmonious beauty, already has elec-
tricity and water, paved streets and 45 miles of street lighting, $30 million
spent in development, stores, hotels, offices. Coral Gables, the ads promise,
is no swampy, boom-time speculation.16 It is interesting to note, however,
that more than half of Rex Beach's little book, The Miracle of Coral
Gables,17 offered free to readers of the developer's ads during the period,
is used to argue that the Florida boom is a bubble which will not burst.
Coral Gables and its founder George Merrick are treated in the opening
and closing chapters. The balance of the text is a lengthy survey of
Florida's fair climate and rich soil as the bases upon which the state's
continued growth and prosperity will rest.

Boomers and advertisers of land away from the Gold Coast employ the
second variation upon the safety-and-profit theme. Their ads emphasize
the dangerously speculative nature of the land boom further south and

truthfully state that land prices in their areas have not (yet) been boomed
into artificially high valuations. Florida land prices are rising steadily, the
ads argue; the advertised land or community is in Florida but not artificial-
ly valued as are lands to the south; ergo, the advertised land or munici-
pality is a safe, sound investment which will undoubtedly appreciate. The
intimation is usually that such ventures are above the crass speculation
run rampant in the south.

One such advertiser, the E. A. White Organization, offers readers in
New York City two developments many miles north of Palm Beach. Villa
Venetia, near Ormond Beach, is represented as being "entirely distinct
from the 'get-rich-quick' phase of the Florida movement-in a different
class entirely from the 'kited Florida property that is steeped in the
speculative whirlpool.'" A breathless string of adjectives and alliterations
attempt to fuse the cliches of the boomer with the conservative words of
a bond-broker: "Poised in a rich, scenic setting of royal verdure and
ocean grandeur . romanced by canopied driveways and fortified by
sound evaluation . ." The ad claims that Villa Venetia is not, of course,
"tainted with unhealthy speculation." The White Organization's other un-
tainted offering is Daytona Park, near Daytona. Much less specifically
described than Villa Venetia, this acreage is marketed simply as reason-
ably priced Florida land away from the boom district. Much of the land
in south Florida, the ad explains,
is priced far above its actual value . The 'get-rich-quick'
craze has nothing in common with the real Florida land move-
ment . Safe and sound investments there are plentiful. Heed-
less risks are unnecessary. And substantial returns are fully as
possible to the conservative investor. I

Many promoters of land or cities far removed from the Gold Coast
presented similar claims to out-of-state readers. The Believers in Jackson-
ville, a boosting group "affiliated" with the Chamber of Commerce, insist
that their city offers great opportunity for profitable investment because it
is the gateway to America's last frontier.'9 Winter Haven's stability, based
not on risky speculation but on phosphate and citrus production and on
homes, lakes, and climate, is the basis of a land developer's ads. One such
ad claims nevertheless that "it is a city with sound industrial future, with
property values increasing overnight, and endless opportunities for
profit."20 The developers of Surfside in St. Augustine present their area

I New York Times, November 15, 1925.
191bid., February 6, 1926.
ZOAtlanta Constitution, November 24, 1925.

ELLIOTT MA CKLE

as being above (as indeed it was) the:
maze of real estate projects depending upon 'booms' to create
high prices regardless of real value . Here you buy property of
high actual worth. No speculator's profits to pay, no inflation.
And this is a city of homes, not a jazz city . Values are in-
creasing daily.21
While readers in the north were being offered opportunities to send
their money south, readers in Miami were as often invited to invest in
land to the north or west. Three ads drawn from one Sunday issue of the
Miami Herald are typical: Poinciana is billed as "The Coming Miami on
the Gulf"; Lennox, "in Fertile Valley, Highlands County," is said to be
the place "where profits and crops grow three times a year"; Mount
Plymouth, in the 'solid central section of Florida,'" is "Not just an op-
portunity-but a certainty."22
Living Like Kings... with Investment Possibilities
Most advertisers of Florida properties and municipalities, although quite
aware that the boom depended upon a continued influx of capital from out
of state, preferred to avoid making purely speculative appreciation the
central feature of their inducements published outside Florida. Many ads
therefore employ other lures-winter climate, recreational facilities, plan-
ned cities and tropical flowers, emulation of the leisure class-and add,
almost diffidently, that there is money to be made in the state. Come to
Florida and live as royalty, the ads murmur, and if it is your pleasure to
favor the state with an investment you will be amply rewarded. Thus
another dichotomy: the public's conception of royal or leisure-class activity
does not include speculation. This approach is used as often by municipali-
ties and purveyors of services as by developers.
The Tampa Board of Trade thus predicts that "Life Will Be Gay This
Winter in Tampa, Florida's Greatest City." The short copy concentrates
upon the winter's entertainments-dog and horse racing, golf, concerts
and dancing, water sports. The ad ends by noting that the gay resort also
offers "thriving industry and commerce."23 Greater Palm Beach (i.e. West
Palm Beach) invites New Yorkers to "Live, Play and Prosper . Where
'Summer Spends the Winter' "; the illustration of one such ad includes a
set of golf clubs leaning against a stock ticker.24 The St. Augustine Cham-
ber of Commerce stresses the educational value of vacationing in America's

Oldest City. Quaint homes and ancient landmarks are advertised as pro-
viding a first-hand study of history; surf-kissed beaches, stately hotels and
tropical surroundings nevertheless assure the reader that this center of
uplift is strictly Floridian. Toward the bottom of the ad additional infor-
mation is provided: "Investment possibilities with logical base values, not
inflated."25 The Believers in Jacksonville contrast the sad, sterile lives of
"the men who never play" with the well-rounded existence of Jacksonville
businessmen. In a northern city, runs one ad in the Saturday Evening Post,
a man labors without rest or vacation building a business; he will, he tells
himself, seek recreation upon retirement. Alas, that day never comes, for
the man has never learned to play. "How different from such drudgery"
is life in beautiful Jacksonville, where "opportunities for success are com-
bined with year-round sports and recreation."26

Perhaps the best mating of leisure class ambience with speculative
prospects for profit is an ad for the Floranada Club, a proposed develop-
ment near Ft. Lauderdale. The inducement of the ad, which appeared as a
two-page spread in the New York Times, is that THEY, the right people,
a group of friends powerful socially and financially, have decided that
Floranada will become a new international resort. THEY had decreed
Mayfair, Park Avenue, and Biarritz. "The right people decided to live in a
place--overnight the values rise. Today it is happening in Florida-at
Floranada Club." Floranada appears to have been a speculation by the
rich and prominent; well-known names, evidently the backers of the pro-
ject, are represented as "planning" houses, as "definitely interested" in the
club. Stotesbury, Biddle, Dodge, Pillsbury, and a brace of unfamiliar
British titles are listed, their "interest" left fairly vague. A residence is
said to be "planned" for the King of Greece, although it is not specifically
stated that this personage is aware of the compliment. The ad claims that
these people "intend living there themselves" and want "a congenial com-
munity. Therefore, care is being taken to provide for the man of back-
ground rather than wealth . plots are being planned to sell as low as
$4,000." Handsome drawings of projected clubhouse, planned residences,
and socially-favored couples do not obscure the ad's primary message,
presented as almost an afterthought: sales begin tomorrow, lots to be
assigned by the company, first come, first served.27

Less spectacular, although presenting messages similar to those of
Floranada, is a small ad taken by the developers of a community promoted

as the Westchester of Daytona Beach. Ortona, the copy runs in part, is
"a place where millionaires and well-to-do people already live snugly and
happily, and 36 more cottages are in process of construction ... Reason-
able, non-inflated prices of lots. Easy terms. Ranging from $4,000 up."28

The formula of regal ambience wed to leisure-time profit is frequently
used by the Coral Gables Corporation in both local and national advertis-
ing. This developer was not above advertising sensational advances in land
valuation; usually, however, images of tropical plants, harmonious archi-
tecture, or temperate climate precede the speculative inducement in the ad
copy. A local ad for the Biscayne Bay section, for example, after describing
the natural beauty of the area, the planned hotel, and the lure of the South
Seas which the subdivision will match, goes on to the primary message:
"Here-in this actual inset of Millionaire Row-will be extended and
carried on the monumental home-building campaign of Coral Gables,
which has achieved as much in beautiful development as it has in value-
enhancement for every part of older Coral Gables.""

Other developers follow the sophisticated lead of Coral Gables with
varying degrees of success. The developers of the Venetian Islands in
Biscayne Bay stress convenient location, "artistic planning," and "environ-
ment of beauty"; the ad is attractively illustrated with a drawing of Venice
(Italy) framed by coconut palms. The ad ends by noting that,

From an Investment Point of View . these islands cannot be
duplicated or enlarged . You will realize that the demand for
such ideally located property as this will rapidly increase month
by month and year by year . and you will draw the inevitable
deduction that the inexorable law of supply and demand is abso-
lutely certain to bring about steadily increasing values.30
Less developed, more speculative Alhambra Heights north of Miami is
said to possess "charming natural beauty" and to be so thoughtfully
restricted as to "assure your artistic home of being a thing of beauty and
a joy forever." Such joy and beauty do not mask the promise: "Investors
with vision who buy now will share in the profits that come from early
buying,"31

A few ads placed by the Coral Gables Corporation effectively convey
the message of combined leisure and profit without mentioning the latter

factor. An ad for Tahiti Beach at Coral Gables run in the Saturday Evening
Post appears to concentrate entirely upon a social note-that the beach
will "take its place with Deauville and The Lido" as an international
resort. An illustration designed to convey an impression of glamorous
recreation contributes to the ad's impact. The ad neither mentions nor
needs to mention speculative gain, yet such a message is received. Profit
has previously been stressed dozens of times in the allied promotional
campaign designed to attract visitors and capital. The primary message
cannot be missed.32

Proposed Sunsets and Other Double Meanings

More than a few ads imply a message which is in direct opposition to
the statements or illustrations the ads actually employ. The dichotomy in
such an ad is therefore not between conflicting statements or intentions
within the ad but between the purported message and that which the
reader receives.

A series of ads run in Time magazine by the promoters of a real estate
speculation called Indrio, 60 miles north of Palm Beach, is an example.
The ad copy is a pastiche of Florida cliche: sun-drenched coast, shimmer-
ing sea, a civic masterpiece, a vision of men of large affairs, 200-foot wide
boulevards, million-dollar hotels, America's Most Beautiful Home Town.
The numerous illustrations are fanciful architect's renderings of "proposed"
plazas, bathing casinos and railway stations and "suggested treatments" of
homes in the pseudo-Mediterranean style of Coral Gables. Even a sunset
behind two palm trees appears at first glance to be a proposal or sugges-
tion. The possibility that the value of land at this Home Town may rise at
some future time is never mentioned. Yet anyone slightly familiar with the
Florida boom and its economic base would surely recognize that the ads
represent pure speculation. And this unstated message is of course the
actual message the advertiser wishes to convey."3

An "Announcement to the Public" by the Miami Biltmore Hotel in
February, 1926, less than a month after the hotel had opened, carries
quite different explicit and implicit messages from those of the Indrio
series. Again, however, the messages are in opposition. The Biltmore ad,
unlike earlier short copy ads stressing social exclusivity amid palatial
splendor, seems to crawl with words. The public is thanked "for the
cordial and enthusiastic reception given" the opening of the hotel. A list

of accommodation prices is furnished, followed by an exhaustively detailed
account of the recreational facilities and programs offered guests during
the winter season. The ad, which appeared in the New York Times,
stresses the "great throngs of winter visitors" to Miami and the "wonderful
attendance" at the opening of the hotel. Yet it was clear in Miami before
the ad was run that the throngs did not plan to remain through spring. The
Biltmore opened as the boom was collapsing. The ad was a desperate
attempt to fill empty rooms."

An ad appeared one week later offering "Profit-two million dollars
estimated." An entire subdivision in rural Highlands County was offered
for sale. The property, "Priced at one-third less than similar developments
in this district .. should retail at $2,750,000 ... Will sell for $750,000
as a whole, on attractive terms on account of sudden illness of one of the
active partners."35 The illness was the collapsing boom. Someone wanted
out. He could not explicitly say so.

Truth in Advertising

Lest it be supposed that all Florida advertising of the period contains
dichotomies, double-meanings, or outright lies, it must be admitted that a
few ads adhere closely to accepted standards of truth in advertising. The
Flagler System did not need to misrepresent its railway and hotel facili-
ties.36 Some local advertisements for land offer little or no more informa-
tion than would a classified ad and can therefore hardly be judged de-
ceptive. In national advertising, however, developers and promoters directly
tied to the spiral of rising land prices ordinarily choose tropical images and
double meanings to admissions that the boom is an ever-more-delicate
bubble. A few do not. The promoters of Fellsmere Estates in the unde-
veloped interior of Indian River County promise unusual profits and
sudden riches. They also explain that rising prices and out-of-state capital
and immigration alone keep the spiral of spending moving ever upward.37

But perhaps most truthful of all the ads surveyed is that of the West
Melbourne Development Company: "A Good Gamble in Florida Real
Estate," booms the headline. The copy contains no prevarication, no
double meaning, no evasion; it panders openly to speculative greed:
"Frankly, it is a gamble, just as most other impending developments are,

but it undoubtedly has in store huge profits for those who hazard a pur-
chase before improvements actually are under way . "3
The boom, like a horse race, was suddenly over. Speculative prices
dropped sharply in the spring of 1926; by summer the reality of complete
collapse was apparent. The hurricane which hit South Florida the following
fall merely sealed the possibility of resurrecting the dead boom. Latter day
puritans may see these events as the divine retribution of an angry, non-
wagering God. Economists point out that the boom collapsed of its own
weight.
Betting produces losers and winners. Floranada and Indrio, so highly
promoted, never rose from the sand; Coral Gables paused when others
failed but never stopped growing. Distrust of speculation and gambling
had for a few years been replaced by gullibility, fascination, wishful think-
ing, and greed. The ambiguous advertising of the boomers, joined to other
factors, produced quite a horse race. It was fun while it lasted.

3SAtlanta Constitution, November 21, 1925.

This Page Blank in Original
Source Document

MARTYRS ALL: The Hero Of Key West And
The Inocentes
by Jost B. FERNANDEZ AND JERRELL H. SHOFNER*
In November, 1971, a group of youthful Cuban expatriates in Miami
celebrated a century-old Cuban holiday by placing shrouded caskets at
prominent places in the United States. The caskets symbolized eight in-
nocent students who were executed by a weak Spanish government in
November, 1871, to appease the peninsulares. These were an extremist
group of reactionaries whose strength was probably greater than that of
the Spanish colonial government of Cuba during the ten-year revolution
which gripped the island after 1868. It was fitting that the 100th anni-
versary of the executions be celebrated in the United States since the
events leading to the incident began there.
There has always been a close relationship between South Florida and
Cuba and not only because early American leaders thought the island
would eventually be annexed to the United States. In the 19th century,
trade was so extensive between the Gulf coastal ports of the United States
and Cuba that Key West was the hub of an extensive trading area. Steam-
ship lines plying between New Orleans and Havana regularly carried car-
goes from both ports to Key West where they were reloaded on vessels
operating out of the Atlantic coastal ports. Business partnerships frequently
had offices in Havana and Key West or other United States ports. Trade
and transportation as well as geographic affinity contributed to extensive
social and cultural ties between the two islands off the Florida mainland.
Labor disputes in the Cuban tobacco industry and growing resistance to
Spanish rule in the late 1860's caused Vicente Martinez Ybor, a major
cigar manufacturer, to move his factories to Key West in 1868. When the
first Cuban revolution occurred that year, it only increased the exodus of
Cubans from their native island to Key West, where many of them planned
to make their permanent homes and others lived in exile until the revolu-
tion either succeeded or was suppressed. The result was an immediate
increase in the population of Key West by several thousand new residents
who had conflicting loyalties toward the revolutionary movement and the
Spanish efforts to suppress it. Frequent confrontations between pro-
Spaniards and those who sympathized with the revolution disturbed the
peace of Key West. Events in Cuba were watched closely from the other
island. Newspapers and public speakers commented on the revolution and
expressed opinions about it. Most of the Cubans in Key West were sympa-

*Dr. Jos6 B. FernAndez is Assistant Professor of Foreign Languages, University of Colo-
rado, Colorado Springs. Dr. Jerrell H. Shofner is Professor of History and Chairman of
the Department of History, Florida Technological University, Orlando.

JOSE B. FERNANDEZ AND JERRELL H. SHOFNER

thetic to the revolutionaries and the newspaper El Republicano of Key
West, edited by Jose Maria Reyes, catered to their opinions with pro-
vocative editorials against the Spanish forces.
Reyes' principal antagonist was Don Gonzalo Castafi6n Escarano, a
reactionary Asturian who edited a pro-Spanish newspaper in Havana
ironically entitled La Voz de Cuba.' Castaii6n had emigrated to Cuba as a
youth and worked for a government official in Puerto Principe (now
Camagiley) until the revolution of 1868. He then moved to Havana and
worked with the Banco Espahiol de la Habana. In Havana he met several
wealthy peninsulares-pro-Spanish residents of Cuba-who appreciated
his reactionary views and financed his newspaper efforts. His extremist
editorials soon became by-words for the peninsulares, and he was regarded
as a hero by the voluntarios. The latter constituted a kind of home guard
or militia, theoretically formed to replace the regular army while it was
away fighting the revolutionaries, but in practice providing an organization
for pro-Spaniards to conduct themselves as vigilantes and threaten the
Civil Governor if his policies were unpopular with them. A test of the
voluntarios' strength and that of their hate-mongering spokesman came
when Governor Dulce ordered Castaii6n expelled from the island. When
the matter was settled the editor kept his position while the Governor was
recalled to Spain.
The Voz de Cuba in Havana and El Republicano in Key West frequently
exchanged insults and Castafi6n finally challenged Reyes to a duel. Since
it was unlikely that the pro-revolutionary editor would go to Cuba,
Castafi6n decided to meet him on his own ground. Arriving at Key West
with four travelling companions on January 29, 1870, the editor of the
Voz de Cuba was met by an angry group of revolutionary sympathizers as
soon as he reached the docks. The commander of nearby Fort Taylor sent
an officer and five soldiers to quell the disturbance. Several persons were
arrested and peace was restored by early evening. The Spaniards registered
at the Russell House-Key West's best hostelry-and let it be known that
they were prepared to meet Reyes and his seconds for the duel.2

When Reyes declined the invitation, Mateo Orozco, a local baker, set
out for the hotel with Francisco and Jos6 Botella at about noon on January
31, to act in Reyes' place. Castafi6n refused to fight Orozco, perhaps
because of the latter's lowly social status. A heated argument followed
and Castafi6n was shot to death. An angry crowd gathered around the

hotel, causing Mayor Henry Mulrennan to ask for military assistance from
Fort Taylor. Captain J. B. Shinn sent a twenty man detachment which
patrolled the town during the remainder of the day. No further violence
erupted despite considerable excitement engendered by the shooting.
Orozco and the Botella brothers left Key West aboard the Fulton, a
fishing smack owned and operated by an American named Thomas Athel-
ston Franklin.4 Since the United States was trying to maintain a strict
neutrality toward Spain and the Cuban revolutionaries, Monroe County
Judge James W. Locke hurriedly convened a coroner's jury which decided
that Castafi6n had been assassinated by unidentified persons. The body was
released only a few hours after the shooting. Former Confederate Secretary
of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory immediately took charge of the remains
and escorted them back to Cuba.
News of the assassination spread across the island, causing "profound
indignation" among the peninsulares. Receiving an account of the affair
by cable from Key West, the Voz de Cuba reprinted it on a hand-bill which
was widely distributed throughout Havana. The impression was created
that Castafi6n had died a martyr to the Spanish cause. According to the
American Vice-Consul, Henry C. Hall, the news stimulated the "excitable
passions" of the "lowest and worst class of Peninsulares."'

An elaborate funeral procession and ceremony on February 2 passed
without incident. But on the same day, Don Vincente Danni, a native
Cuban who had become a naturalized citizen of the United States, was shot
in a coffee house in Havana. Having returned to Cuba on the same vessel
which brought back the body, he attempted to give his own version of the
incident in Key West in rebuttal to an exaggerated story being discussed in
his presence. An argument ensued and he was shot.6

At Matanzas a battalion of Spanish voluntarios returned from the field
just in time to receive news of the assassination. A few of the soldiers de-
cided to take a number of prominent Cuban prisoners from jail and execute
them to revenge Castafi6n. Just before midnight on February 2, the
voluntario battalion was assembled at the Plaza de Armas in Matanzas.
For about an hour there were cries of "Death to Traitors," and demands
that the prisoners be delivered for execution. The Provincial Governor

came to the square and demanded an explanation. Over the objections of
their officers a few of the voluntarios launched verbal assaults on the
Governor. Several shots were fired into private houses along the streets
and threats of violence against prominent Cubans were made.

Ignoring the hostile threats the Governor made a speech in which he
pointed out that most of the troubles faced by Spanish authorities in
Matanzas were caused by excesses such as the midnight demonstration.
When two companies of marines promised to support him, the Governor
marched them into position in the Plaza. Gradually the officers regained
control of the voluntarios just as day broke. A review was called for eight
o'clock in the morning. Addressing the assembled soldiers, the Governor
announced his determination to punish those responsible for the previous
night's disturbance. A few days later six men were arrested and transported
in handcuffs to Havana where they were shipped back to Spain. That led
to new demonstrations against the chief executive and the local police
chief. The latter finally agreed to resign on February 8 and order was
restored in Matanzas.7

After the shooting of Danni in Havana, Vice-Consul Hall reported that
the event was being capitalized on to give the impression that "American
citizens are in jeopardy here. But this in my judgment is not true." He
expressed hope that "nothing will be done to disturb the existing har-
mony."8 Three days later on Sunday, February 6, Isaac Greenwald, a
German-born citizen of New York, was walking with Thomas K. Foster,
Gardner Wells, and Hugh Johnson near the Tac6n theatre in Havana.
Everyone except Wells happened to be wearing blue neckties. A man
described as "in civilian dress wearing a panama hat and cockade of the
volunteers" accosted Greenwald, then backed off about six feet and shot
him with a pistol. A large crowd immediately assembled and numerous
additional shots were fired. All three Americans wearing blue neckties
were struck by bullets.9 Greenwald was pursued and stabbed to death.
Johnson managed to escape. Foster was being hotly pursued down a main
street, along which the French Consul General, the Marquis de Tobin
Janson, happened to be driving. Seeing them shoot Foster in the back,
Janson stopped his carriage and approached the two assailants. His inter-
ference enabled Foster to escape with his life. According to Janson, "the
two men approached me menacingly, one was cleaning a stiletto." When
asked what was happening, the man with the knife answered that Foster

7Hall to Davis, February 11, 1870, ibid.
8Hall to Davis, February 3, 1870, ibid
9Affidavit of Gardner Wells, in Hall to Davis, February 7, 1870, ibid.

TEQUESTA

was a "villain" who wore "an American cravat" and that more such per-
sons should "suffer the same fate."10
Crediting the French Consul with saving Foster's life, Hall wrote that
"I must modify the statement I made about the safety of Americans here."
Although the Spanish authorities had offered a $1,000 reward for the man
who had caused the incident, Hall thought they would be unable to "protect
the lives of peaceable inhabitants or to punish the atrocities that are being
daily committed . ."'1 He was displeased that the Spanish were fixing
responsibility on one person when "there could not have been less than
fifty engaged in the affair."12 He called on Washington to send war-
ships to Havana to provide a safe refuge for American citizens if further
"popular outbreaks" occurred.

In late February, Thomas Franklin, whom the peninsulares believed
had provided transportation of the assassins of Castaii6n, foolishly sailed
the Fulton into Havana harbor. Hearing of his arrival, a group of volun-
tarios determined to punish him. Franklin was told of their plans just in
time to escape to the safety of the Defense, a British warship anchored
nearby. Realizing that Franklin was in danger until he could reach the
open sea beyond the point near Morro Castle, the British commander
suggested that the American be escorted beyond that point. The Spanish
Consul General agreed and another incident was averted.14

When he arrived in Havana, Thomas Biddle, the newly appointed
United States Consul, reported that the Captain General of Cuba expressed
his determination to sustain the cordiality existing between the two coun-
tries and promised a rigid investigation of the death of Isaac Greenwald.5
A few days later Eugenio Zamora was arrested for the crime. He was tried,
found guilty, and sentenced to be shot. Except for the verbal exchange
between Biddle and the Captain General, there was no official discussion
between the United States and Spain regarding the events either at Key
West or Cuba. Determination to maintain neutrality during the revolt on
the island was strong in 1870.
But the voluntarios continued to intimidate the civil authorities in Cuba
and their wishes sometimes rendered the administration of justice impos-
sible. They never forgot their martyred hero who lay in a sealed glass

lOAffidavit of de Tobin Janson, February 8, 1870, ibid.
11Hall to Davis, February 9, 1870, ibid.
12Hall to Davis, February 12, 1870, ibid.
13Hall to Davis, February 9, 1870, ibid.
14Howell Salmon of the Defense to Thomas Biddle, February 21, 1870, ibid.
15Biddle to Davis, February 18, 1870, ibid.

36 JOSE B. FERNANDEZ AND JERRELL H. SHOFNER

tomb in the Espada Cemetery. On November 23, 1871, a group of medical
students at the University of Havana provided an opportunity for the
voluntarios to express themselves. Forty-six students-forty-three Cubans,
a Spanish army officer, another Spaniard, and a British citizen-tired of
waiting for their anatomy professor who was later than usual that day and
left the school in search of amusement until their next class. Four of them
entertained the others by riding around the nearby Espada Cemetery in the
carriage which was normally used for transporting indigent bodies to the
school for scientific use. Another plucked a flower from the cemetery
garden. 16

The cheers of the exuberant students unfortunately awakened Vicente
Cobas, the cemetery watchman, from his siesta. He chastized the errant
students, who departed the cemetery after directing some remarks at the
indignant Cobas. While they returned to class, the watchman, an ardent
Spanish colonialist with strong prejudices against Cubans, complained bit-
terly of the incident to the cemetery chaplain. The priest attempted to calm
Cobas, explaining that the foolish youngsters had done nothing to warrant
further pursuit of the matter. But the old peninsular was not persuaded.
These were the kind of people for whose extermination his martyred hero,
Gonzalo Castaii6n, had called only a short time earlier. Unwilling to heed
the priest's urging that he drop the matter, Cobas went in search of a more
receptive audience. At the Casino Espafiol he met Apolinar del Rato and
Felipe Alonso, both of whom were voluntario officers. Alonso, who had
accompanied Castafi6n on his fateful journey to Key West in 1870, was
especially interested in Cobas' story. Since the mere charges of riding in a
carriage through the cemetery and picking a single flower from its garden
were scarcely serious enough for their purposes, the three decided to em-
bellish the story by charging that the students had desecrated the grave of
Castafi6n, the hero of Key West.17
After releasing the revised version of the cemetery incident to the
voluntarios, the two officers went to the Civil Governor, Dionisio L6pez
Roberts, with their charges against the students. While the voluntarios were
beginning to call for action on his part, L6pez Roberts accompanied Rato
and Alonso on an inspection of the cemetery. Although the glass cover on
Castafi6n's grave showed three small scratches, the cemetery chaplain
testified that they had been made long before the students made their un-
fortunate afternoon excursion. L6pez Roberts was unconvinced and resolv-
ed to question the students directly. At three P.M. on November 25, he

16Angueira, "Inocentes."
171bid.

TEQUESTA

and the 2nd battalion of voluntarios interrupted a class at the university.
L6pez Roberts took over the lectern and delivered a strong admonition
against the parties who had desecrated Castafi6n's grave and threatened to
send them all to prison unless the guilty party confessed. Shocked by the
distorted account of the incident, the students protested. The impatient
L6pez Roberts ordered the arrest of all the students, except for the Spanish
officer. In prison, four students-Bermfidez, Laborde, Marcos and Rod-
riguez-confessed to riding in the carriage and Alvarez de la Campa ad-
mitted that he had taken a flower from the garden.

On November 26 an irate mob of voluntaries formed near the prison.
Acting Governor-General Romualdo Crespo had called a military parade
for that same day. Voluntarios assembled for the parade had further op-
portunity to become aroused and determined for action. When Governor-
General Crespo returned to his palace after the parade, he was met by
about 3,000 voluntarios demanding "justice" toward the "traitors." Al-
though he had information indicating that the students were innocent,
Crespo named a tribunal of Spanish regular army officers to try them.
Captain Federico Capdevilla was assigned to defend them. After a brief
trial that evening a verdict of guilty was reached and the students were
sentenced to short prison terms.

Incensed by what they alleged to be an inadequate sentence, the volun-
tarios went on a violent rampage. Capdevilla's life was threatened and L6pez
Roberts was physically assaulted when he went to the prison to try to calm
the excited crowd. Two Spanish generals were injured m the disturbance.
Shouting "Death to the Profanators of the Hero of Key West," the volun-
tarios surged drunkenly through the streets of Havana. In one of several
shooting incidents, two Spaniards were injured and three free blacks were
shot. I

When a group of voluntarios stormed his palace, Governor-General
Crespo surrendered to their demands and appointed a new tribunal com-
posed of six regular army officers and nine voluntarios. The presiding judge
was Apolinar del Rato, one of the originators of the fictitious charges The
students were brought to trial for a second time at five A.M. on November
27. Capdevilla was not allowed in the room where the trial took place.
Eight hours later the five students who had ridden in the carriage and taken
the flower were sentenced to be shot. The Spanish citizen and the British
subject were freed. The thirty-eight remaining students-all Cubans-were
sentenced to long prison terms, except that three of their number, to be

1 i1bid.

38 JOSE B. FERNANDEZ AND JERRELL H. SHOFNER

chosen by lot, were to be executed along with the condemned five. The
tribunal had decreed that eight students must die. The three who lost the
draw were Carlos de la Torre, Eladio Gonzalez and Carlos Verdugo. The
latter had been absent from Havana on the day of the cemetery incident.
The eight were shot that same afternoon. "
The executions set off a wave of indignant protests from nations all over
the world. Even several prominent Spanish officials denounced the act so
vigorously that both L6pez Roberts and Crespo were recalled from their
positions. But the United States again remained strictly neutral. Although
the Washington government had carefully avoided involvement in the
Cuban revolution since its inception in 1868, its representative in Havana
-Henry Hall was again in charge-made the task much simpler by his
reports of the cemetery incident and subsequent events. On November 27
he called for an American warship to be sent to Havana harbor because he
feared that the voluntarios might overpower the government and launch a
wholesale massacre. But on the following day he reported that the students
were guilty of the charges against them and that they had additionally
attacked the cemetery chaplain. After having forwarded that report based
on what he called "reliable sources," Hall sent Joseph Raphael, a Spanish-
speaking employee of the consulate, to investigate. Raphael found no
evidence of damage to Castafi6n's grave. Hall then told the state depart-
ment that the students were not guilty of the alleged offenses and that
thirty-five of them were erroneously serving prison terms at hard labor. An
American warship, the Terror, arrived in Havana on December 1 in
response to his earlier request, but found the city quiet.
Neither President Ulysses S. Grant nor Secretary of State Hamilton Fish
had taken any official notice of the events in Cuba, but on December 6
they were shocked out of their indifference by Massachusetts Congressman
Nathaniel Banks who demanded that the President inform the House of
Representatives of the "recent execution of Cuban students under the pre-
text that they had insulted the memory of a Spaniard."20 Banks' implicit
threat brought a promise from the administration to negotiate with the
Spanish government on the matter of releasing the imprisoned students.
Henry Hall was replaced in Havana by A. A. Torbert whose dispatches
assumed a tone much more favorable toward the Cuban revolutionaries
and criticized the role of the colonial government in the student affairs.
The government of King Amadeo I faced a dilemma. Fervently wishing
to appease the United States government, it was afraid that any conciliation
toward the students would set off a reign of terror by the voluntarios. In

I9Ibid.
20Congressional Globe, 42nd Cong., 2nd Sess., part 1, 29.

TEQUESTA

March, 1872, after three months of steady pressure from both the United
States and Britain, the Spanish government officially admitted that the
students had been innocent of any wrongdoing, that their execution and
imprisonment had been a crime, and the survivors should be freed. In May
the King signed an amnesty proclamation, but refused to declare them in-
nocent for fear of further voluntario violence. The students were quietly
taken aboard the Spanish frigate Zaragoza and transported to Spain where
the voluntarios could not reach them."1 In 1887 Gonzalo Castai6n's son,
Fernando, affirmed that his father's grave had never been damaged by the
students or anyone else.z2
Just as Castafidn became a martyr for the extremist peninsulares and
their paramilitary voluntario supporters, the eight students became heroes
of the Cuban revolutionaries. Castafi6n's assassination was forgotten by
Key West citizens as other violent confrontations occurred to attract atten-
tion. The United States government was forced to take notice of the
Virginius affair when several Americans were executed by the Spanish
government in 1873, but again the pressures exerted on the Madrid gov-
ernment were restrained. The revolution was suppressed by the late 1870's,
although Cubans still yearned for independence and politicians in Florida
frequently called for American assistance in their behalf. When revolution
occurred again in the 1890's, the United States was more aggressive in its
demands on the Spanish government. Cuba became free from Spain, al-
though American tutelage endured for several decades. With Spanish
control removed, the new Cuban government made November 27 a na-
tional holiday. Cuban schools were annually dismissed for that day in
memory of the martyred students.
In the 20th century, Cuban government has undergone several changes.
In the 1950's Fidel Castro's revolution against the Batista regime was
successful. For the Cuban expatriates who are once again living in South
Florida-this time in Miami-Castro has come to symbolize suppression
of freedom in the manner of the Spanish colonial government of a century
ago. "Abdala," the Miami-based organization of Cuban exiles, used the
empty caskets to remind the world that November 27, 1971, was the 100th
anniversary of the arbitrary execution of eight innocent persons by a waver-
ing Spanish colonial government. It was appropriate that the demonstra-
tion occurred in South Florida where Castafi6n's assassination had set in
motion the series of turbulent events which culminated in the execution of
the eight innocent students.

During the Civil War a young man, James Arango Armour served as a
volunteer coastal pilot aboard the Federal Patrol boat, Sagamore. He had
come to the Indian River in the 1850's and knew the intricate waterways
of this section well. He was a native of New Amsterdam, New York where
he was born September 5, 1825. In his early youth he had served aboard
American clipper ships.

His services as guide and pilot aboard the Sagamore were very valuable
to the Captain Earl English of this ship and other commanders under
whom he served. He received letters of commendation from Capt. English
and also Admiral Theodorus Bailey.

When the Jupiter lighthouse was darkened by southern sympathizers
and important and necessary parts of the light mechanism were carried
away and hidden, James Armour was detailed to hunt for them. He found
them cached away in a palmetto hammock and carried them in a small
boat to Key West. At Key West, he was made keeper of prize ships. At
the close of the war he returned to Jupiter Light and was present as an
assistant keeper when it was re-lighted in June, 1866. Two years later he
became head keeper, a position he held for forty years.

On December 6, 1967 he married at LeCrange, Florida, Miss Almeda
Catherine Carlile. He brought his bride to the lighthouse where she was
the only white woman for a radius of a hundred miles. Their daughter,
Katherine Dickerson Armour, born November 16, 1868 was the first white
child born in this area and she lived to become in time the wife of Capt.
Armour's successor, Joseph Wells, as keeper of Jupiter Lighthouse. The
next children were Lida Thurston, Mary Elizabeth, James A. Jr., Charles
Carlile, William Bryson and Bertha Lydia. Mary died in infancy and
James Jr. as a young man. The only one of this generation of the family
still living is Mrs. Bertha Bush of Eureka, California. She has supplied
some stories of early days when she lived at the lighthouse.

The Indians were all very friendly with Capt. Armour and often visited
the lighthouse. The names she recalls are Billy Bowlegs, Jack Scarber and

*Mrs. John R. DuBois of Jupiter is the historian of the Jupiter Lighthouse and the nearby
Wreck of the Victor. See Tequesta XX (1960) and XXIII (1963).

BESSIE WILSON DUBOIS

Chief Tallahassee. She says one of them wanted her sister, Kate, as his
squaw and her mother said Kate ran and hid whenever she saw the Indians
coming to the lighthouse.
Mrs. Bush relates a frightening experience her mother had one day
when the men at the lighthouse had gone to the ocean beach for several
hours. An Indian came to see her father. He was a stranger unknown to
her mother. He tried to explain who he was but she failed to understand.
So he finally took out his big sheath knife and taking it by the blade,
handed it to her mother. She was terribly frightened but she did not let
him know it. She made signs to ask what she was supposed to do with the
knife. He pointed to the handle where he had carved his name. Greatly
relieved, she handed the knife back by the blade as he had offered it to her.
He waited for a while but left before the men returned from the beach.
The Indians appeared so silently, apparently from nowhere that the
young wife, preparing a meal in the kitchen would look up startled to find
an Indian standing beside her. One time sitting in the living room Mrs.
Armour felt someone lightly touch her on the shoulder and there at her
side was a very large Indian.
Mrs. Armour's nephew, Alfred Smith was one of the first mail carriers.
The Armour's had a large hog named Denny who was quite a pet. He
came to the kitchen windows and grunted for hand-outs. Mrs. Bush says
that when Alfred Smith started out with the mail he would cross the river
from the lighthouse in a row boat and walk the beach from there to Lake
Worth, returning the next day. Denny would swim behind the boat follow-
ing Alfred and would go along with him for quite a distance on the beach
until, as she supposed, he would get tired. He would then turn around and
come home, repeating this journey every time Alfred set forth with the
mail. Denny came to a sad end when he attempted to chew on a bear hide
someone at the lighthouse was trying to cure. It had poison on it and
Denny died.
One of the sad times at the lighthouse came to the Armour family when
they awoke one night to find the little daughter, Mary in convulsions. They
filled a tub with sand so they could make a fire in the sail boat to heat
water. As they sailed with her to the doctor in Titusville, all the way up
the river they gave her first cold then hot baths but in spite of this difficult
treatment, little Mary died.

The Armour home at the lighthouse was called a haven of hospitality
and many noted guests were welcomed there. Dr. James A. Henshall called
here in 1880's and in his Camping & Cruising In Florida wrote that Capt.

E A t

.05.

TEQUESTA

Armour was a courageous and resourceful man. Kirk Munroe who wrote
early juvenile books camped on the lighthouse grounds. In fact people who
came to Florida in the early days were happy to stop at the lighthouse and
see where they had been and expected to go.

When a panther raided the hen house of a pioneer family it was the
lighthouse keepers who came with dogs and hunted the varmint down and
killed him. They also killed bears on the reservation.

When the word came down river in 1872 that the palmetto shack of
some newcomers named Pierce had burned to the ground with all their
belongings, Capt. Armour set forth at once and met their boat coming
down river. They were invited to the lighthouse where Pierce became an
assistant keeper just in time to participate in the salvage of the steamer,
Victor which replenished some of the family necessities.

An amusing episode is recounted in the story of Emily LaGow Bell in
her trip down the Indian River in the 1880's visit to the lighthouse. They
stayed over night on their boat. The sand flies were very bad in spite of
the mosquito nets. The three children began to cry and to comfort them
the good Captain sang them a song, reminiscent of his sailing days.
A is the Anchor, which holds our jolly ship.
B is the Bowsprit, which neatly does fit.
C is the Capstan, on the deck it does stand.
D is the Davits, where the small boats hang.
E is the Ensign, of red, white and blue.
F is the Forecastle, which holds the jolly crew.
G is the Gangway, where the captain does stand.
H is the Hawser which never will strand.
I is the Iron which bounds our ship round.
J is the Jib-boom where the head sails are found.
K is the Kelson, that leads fore and aft.
L is the Lanyards, that make back stays fast.
M is the Main-mast, down through the deck goes.
N is the Nasty old cook at his stove.
O is the Order for all men to beware.
P is the Pump where all men swear.
Q is the Quadrant, the sun it does take.
R is the Rigging, that never will break.

BESSIE WILSON DUBOIS

S is the Starboard, side of our jolly ship.
T is the Topsail, never will it split.
U is the Ugly old captain, down aft.
V is the Varnish that brightens our mast.
W is the Water, more salty than brine.
X Y Z there is nothing can rhyme.
Many of the heads of the first pioneer families spent a year at the light-
house as assistant keepers to look around for homesteads. After they left
the lighthouse service their friendship with the captain continued. He was
visited and consulted by surveyors, homesteaders, hunters and fishermen.
Reserved, selfreliant and kindly to all, his courage in this early wilderness
was respected and depended upon by all who knew him.
In 1906 Captain Armour inherited a substantial fortune for those days
and was able to build a spacious and comfortable home not far from the
light he had tended for a life time. He passed his last years surrounded by
his family and friends. He died July 8, 1910 and was buried in Jupiter
cemetery. This was before roads and bridges in Jupiter and the funeral
procession was by boat to the cemetery. Rev. C. P. Jackson, an Episcopal
Clergyman, conducted the services. His son-in-law, Katherine's husband
succeeded him as keeper. So the family served the Jupiter Lighthouse for
over half a century.

2. CAPTAIN MILLS OLCOTT BURNHAM:
KEEPER OF CAPE CANAVERAL LIGHTHOUSE
During the Civil War a schooner the Red Wing was wrecked near Cape
Canaveral. Two of the crew were drowned but the captain and his wife
and three other crew members made their way to shore. They were almost
naked. The captain's wife was clad in an oil skin suit.
They worked along the beach and finally exhausted, cold and
hungry, came to the Cape Canaveral lighthouse. The light had been
dismantled for the duration of the war and pirates had vandalized the
place, cutting up the keeper's four-posted bed and even drinking up the
alcohol on his collection of rare fish. There was no food. In despair they
circled the lighthouse area and found a sand trail leading off in the woods.
Following it a short distance they came to a wrecked wagon which seemed
to be the end of the road. As they stood almost ready to return to the
beach they heard in the distance a rooster crowing. Reasoning there must
be people where there were domestic fowl, they followed the sound and
presently came out in a clearing where they were greeted by a benign,
bearded gentleman with large sad eyes.
They were fed and cared for by his wife and five daughters. It was their
very good fortune to find the secluded farm of Captain Mills Alcott Burn-
ham, keeper of the Cape Canaveral light. When they had recovered suf-
ficiently the good captain sailed them up to Sand Point from there they
found a ship to take them to New York.
In retrospect it seems the rooster was very discreet and did not crow
when the pirates were in the vicinity.
Of all the early Florida lighthouse keepers, Captain Mills Alcott Burn-
ham is most outstanding. The lighthouses of those days were isolated and
the keepers, in addition to keeping their lights in order, performed rescues
during ship wrecks and generally represented their government with dignity
and courage. They also served a lifetime.
Captain Burnham was born September 8, 1817 in Thetford, Vermont.
Later he lived in Troy, New York and learned the trade of gunsmith at
the Watervliet Government Arsenal. In 1835 at 18 years of age he married
a Scotch-Irish lass of 16, Mary McEwen. Two years later it was thought
he had the lung disease and he was sent south for his health. He spent the
winter in Duval County at a place known as Garey's Ferry where it is
supposed he worked at his trade of gunsmith. His health improved and
he evidently found Florida frontier life to his liking as in 1839 he brought
his wife and son and daughter to Jacksonville and remained a Floridian
for the rest of his life.

.1-f.

ali n-.

BESSIE WILSON DUBOIS

His health not only improved but he became well known for his feats of
strength. When newly formed Duval County needed a sheriff, able to con-
tend with some very unruly frontier badmen, they selected Mills Alcott
Burnham. Later in 1841-1842 he became a member of the Territorial
Legislature.

In 1842 Congress passed the Armed Occupation Act which allowed 160
acres of land south of Palatka on either the east or west coast of Florida
to any settler who could hold this land among the hostile Seminoles for
seven years. Two bands of settlers went forth. The ones on the east coast
settled from St. Augustine south to Fort Jupiter. The settlers were situated
near the waterways as they depended for supplies upon schooners.
Captain Burnham took up land on the Indian River near Fort Pierce.
He was very friendly with the Seminoles. They admired his strength and
his knowledge of guns and came in numbers to camp on the edge of his
land and enjoy his hospitality. Mrs. Burnham did not share his trust in his
Indian friends and was terrified of them. Burnham had a standing agree-
ment that when he was away they were not to come, a pact they faithfully
kept.
Cash was very scarce and often Burnham would load his schooner with
green turtles and sail up to Charleston, South Carolina where they brought
a good price. He made wooden cradles to support the turtle necks as they
lay on their backs on the deck. He also had his crew sponge their eyes
with salt water at intervals. His turtles arrived in better condition than
others and brought more money.
It was while the Captain was on one of those trips to Charleston the
Indian River Colony came to grief. The Seminoles became incensed with a
trader named Barker who they alleged put black sand in the gun powder
and watered the fire water. One morning in August, 1849 the Indians
appeared in the settlement and shot Barker. His brother-in-law, a Major
Russell knew he would probably be the next victim so he persuaded the
other settlers that the Indians planned to massacre all of them and they
should flee their homesteads. The only transportation was a schooner
belonging to a Captain Reuben Pinkham who lived on the Indian River
inlet. Hastily they embarked. The Indians appeared as they sailed away
and took a parting shot at Major Russell, the bullet lodging in his arm.
During the night the pain became intense and he rummaged around in
the cabin for a remedy. He found what he thought was salve but was in
reality a bottle of ink with which he massaged his arm. He was horrified
in the morning to find it black and concluded it was "mortified."

TEQUESTA

The schooner was becalmed in the hot sun for several days and the
settlers who had not even brought hats suffered. When they finally reached
St. Augustine Major Russell looked up Dr. Peck and insisted that his arm
be amputated. Some of the men aboard knew about the ink but they so
disliked the Major and were bitter about the loss of their homesteads,
that they said nothing so the arm was amputated.
The Burnham family were delighted to find the captains' schooner had
just come in to St. Augustine. They never returned to the homestead on
Indian River. All the settlers lost their land except Captain Pinkham who
having a schooner was no doubt able to return to his property.
In 1847 the Cape Canaveral lighthouse was built and in 1853 Captain
Burnham was appointed keeper of the light. He held this position until his
death 33 years later. He and Mrs. Burnham, at the time he became keeper
had one son, Mills and four daughters. Another son died at 14 years of
age and another daughter was born at the lighthouse. The eldest daughter,
Frances, at first helped her father tend the light. In 1856 Frances married
Henry Wilson who became Captain Burnham's assistant keeper.

The Captain and his son-in-law explored along the Banana River and
found a piece of land about four and a half miles from the lighthouse.
This became their farm. There were sour oranges on the property. These
were budded with stock from Dummit grove and in time expanded into a
fifteen acre orange grove. They also planted pineapples, bananas and
sugar cane.
At the outbreak of the Civil War all the lighthouses along the southern
coast were ordered darkened by Confederate Secretary of War Mallory.
Captain Burnham carefully dismantled the mechanism of the light and
packed all in wooden chests which he buried in his orange grove. These
were turned over to the lighthouse service after the war in good condition.
Henry Wilson, Burnham's son-in-law and his son, Mills marched off to
join the Confederate forces and Captain Burnham, his wife, five daughters,
an old nero retainer and an elderly friend retired to the farm where they
lived an almost idyllic existence for the duration of the war. Game was
plentiful, fish and oysters in abundance. The Captain's cane patch provided
syrup and he also made his own rum. Also he grew corn for his stock. It
was said they lacked nothing except the daughters might have wished for
some more fashionable material for their dresses than the several bolts of
striped bed ticking their father bougth before the war.
As the war neared a close Captain Henry Wilson came home on furlough
weary from a long march from Virginia, the last 175 miles on foot. The

TEQUESTA

war ended before it was time for him to return so he remained at
Canaveral. Sad to say the Burnham's only son, Mills, died of illness at
Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The lighthouse at Canaveral was replaced with another tower costing
half a million dollars. It was commenced in 1866 and completed in 1868.
By 1886 the sea came within 70 feet of this latest tower. Another appro-
priation of $300,000. was made to move the tower three quarters of a mile
inland, an engineering feat that took about 18 months.
With the death of Captain Burnham's son, Mills, the Burnham name
did not continue. His five daughters found husbands among the young
assistant keepers. Later Captain Burnham's sons-in-law were keepers of
many lights along the coast. His son-in-law, George Quarterman became
keeper of Canaveral light after Captain Burnham died in April, 1886.
Another son-in-law, James M. Knight succeeded Quarterman as keeper
of Cape Canaveral light. Clinton Honeywell also served as keeper. In fact
the Burnham family served the light continuously for 73 years.

Among Captain Burnham's great grandsons are Charles Nauman to
whom I am indebted for the pictures of the Burnham family. He made a
trip to Canaveral to borrow them from an elderly uncle. Also there is
Raymond Swanson an enterprising young electrician whose mother was a
Honeywell and whose grandmother lived on the Cape and did beautiful
palmetto weaving.
Another great-grandson, the late Burnham Knight, was a son of Captain
Thomas Knight a lifetime keeper of Hillsboro light. Knight was very proud
of his illustrious great grandfather and used to imitate his feats of strength.
Captain Burnham died in April of 1886. His last birthday was also his
golden wedding anniversary. He and Mrs. Burnham had a two day gala
festival for all their family and many friends. At his death it was proposed
by the lighthouse inspector and his long time friend, Captain P. B. Lenber-
ton that he be buried on the lighthouse reservation but his wife, recalling
the happy years on the farm, asked that he be buried in the orange grove
under the spreading live oak trees where in less than two years she
joined him.
A man whose great grandsons' faces light up in pride at the mention of
his name-does not need an epitaph.
REFERENCES-EAST COAST FLORIDA MEMOIRS
By Robert Ransom
RECORDS OF THE LIGHT STATION
DISTRICT OF FERNANDINA National Archives

West Palm Beach
by DORA DOSTER UTZ*

It was not long after this that Papa decided to move down to West Palm
Beach which he did, and again set up his merchandising business. This
lovely resort town was just eighteen miles south of Jupiter.
He built a comfortable two-story house on a big lot with a picket fence
around it and a gate to swing on. Since all the streets were named for
tropical plants and were laid out alphabetically, we were just one block
from his store on Datura Street, whereas his store was on Clematis Avenue,
the main street. In fact, he could step out the back door of our home, walk
through a vacant lot, and reach his store in a few minutes. We occupied
this home about a year and Papa had such a profitable offer to sell it that
he sold and built another two-story home on Evernia Street another block
away. Again he was offered a price for the house which he felt he could
not afford to turn down, so that house was sold also. Then Papa brought
the house we had owned and lived in on the shell mound at Jupiter, and
another house he owned in Jupiter, on big lighters to West Palm Beach and
deposited them on a half block lot he owned there. This lot was on the
corner of Fern and Poinsettia Streets. We rented out one house, and the
other one in which we had lived in Jupiter he placed on the corner and
built an addition to it. He added a large dining room and kitchen on the
back, separated from the main house by a latticed-in "open" room, as we
called it, but which would be called a "breezeway" today. In this open
room we had a water pump which provided the clearest, coolest water I
have ever tasted-quite a change from the covered rain barrels we used
at Jupiter. The water from the pump was so cold that we put watermelons
in the trough under the pump and kept them at a very satisfactory tempera-
ture. In the open room, the doors of which could be locked the same as the
rest of the house, we kept a rack for our bicycles and our icebox.
When I contemplate our childhood in West Palm Beach some fifty odd
years ago it seems to me that we were especially privileged to have lived
in that paradise during our most impressionable years. [Written about 1956]
We were southerners in a southern town, yet how different from the
magnolia and moss-draped live oak region of northern Florida around
Tallahassee, or the pine tree flats of north central Florida, or the grassy
cattle lands and vegetable growing areas. I had never seen a cotton plant
until we went to visit some kinfolk on a Georgia farm, where I was given
the thrill of plucking the fluffy white cotton oit of the bolls.

*For identification of the author and introduction see the article by Mrs. Utz in Tequesta
XXXII (1972) describing their life at Jupiter.

TEQUESTA

In our yard in Florida we had garish red hibiscus plants, both red and
yellow and double hibiscus. We had yellow alamanda bushes. We had
orange, lemon, lime and banana trees in our back yard, and bougainvillea
and clematis vines on fences and arbors. I planted a coconut in the ground
and nurtured it, and was thrilled to see it sprout and in time grow into a
coconut tree. We had night blooming cereus plants whose rare, large white
waxey flowers opened about midnight, perfuming the air with a heavy
overpowering sweetness. We had cape jasmine, oleanders of different
colors, and crepe myrtle, but roses were scarce in that sandy soil and
needed high cultivation.

Our town was so clean and quiet. The streets were white crushed rock
and shells. The clop-clop of passing horses' feet was only an occasional
dray. There were almost no carriages. Bicycles do not make any noise
other than the musical tinkling of their bells, and everybody rode them.
During the "Season" the tourists rode in wheelchairs, pedaled by colored
men from a rear seat. Some few old people and invalids used them in
town the year round. Once in the early days, Gin Rickshaws had been
introduced, but our colored men were not thinking about running around
all day, pulling somebody in one of those "traptions," so the rickshaws
were stored in a small warehouse, locked up and forgotten.
We had fine churches of all the well known denominations. The Epis-
copal Church was just two doors from us but since it did not have a regular
minister until later we attended the Congregational Church. We never
missed a Sunday at Sunday School. We had one large two-story frame
building which served the elementary grades as well as the high school. In
contrast to many small towns, our teachers all had to meet standards of
higher education. They had to have college degrees. We had a music
teacher just to teach us how to read music and sing. We had fine choral
groups. School was opened every morning by the whole student body
meeting in the auditorium for chapel services at which no one was allow-
ed to be absent without an acceptable excuse.
We had law enforcement officers, I am sure, but I do not recall that
we ever needed them very much.

We had a large fire station but the apparatus was drawn by the volun-
teers themselves.
When we first moved to West Palm Beach the ferry was plying regularly
between the east and west sides of the Lake. There were no telephones, no
electric lights, very little indoor plumbing, except the hotels and public
buildings but that condition improved very rapidly.

DORA DOSTER UTZ

It was wonderful when our home was piped for water, to be able to
just turn a spigot and have running water in the kitchen sink even though
the pump was only a few feet away; but we did not as yet have both hot
and cold running water. We still dipped the hot water from the reservoir
in the back of the stove. We did likewise for the bath tub, carrying pails
of hot water to match the cold running water, but it was wonderful to be
able to stretch out full length in a big tub and no longer have to sit cramped
up in a tub in the kitchen for a bath. The bathroom was a good-sized room,
and Mama had shelves put up all down one side on which she kept towels,
linens, etc., and old books and magazines which she could not bear to
throw away, always thinking we would read them again some day. The
magazines were a mistake, however, for it was so easy to grab a magazine
off the shelf and linger and read for an hour or so until somebody came
pounding on the door to root you out. So we came to call our bathroom
"the Library," and laughed when we referred to it.
In the matter of street lighting, an old colored man came around every
evening at dusk, put up his little step ladder and lit the street lamps. A few
years later, however, acetylene lights were erected on the street corners.
They made such a brilliant light that the neighborhood children gathered
under the light on our corner to play games until called to bed. Then, a
little later, electricity came and we got the first electric lights in our home,
a single bulb hanging from a cord suspended from the exact center of the
ceiling. I think it was Mr. Joseph Jefferson, the famous actor and winter
resident, who pressed the switch which turned on the electricity in our
town for the first time, quoting as he did so from the Bible:
"And the Lord said, 'let there be light'
And there was light."
I was particularly glad when our house was wired for electricity. It had
been my Saturday morning chore to clean, polish, and trim the wicks in
twelve kerosene lamps. I had to wash the glass chimneys in hot soap suds,
For sometimes ocean breezes caused the flame to gutter thus smoking up
the chimney. Also tiny insects, like gnats and sandflies, came in through
the screening and met their fate on the hot lamps causing a pretty messy
appearance. I had to polish the chimney so that not a shadow showed and
rub up the metal bases. So electric lights looked fine to me although I often
had to stand on a chair to turn them on at the globe.
We had a colored wash woman and cook, but Mama thought children
should have their chores to perform, and especially that little girls should
be taught how to keep a house in order.

TEQUESTA

Our town was divided in half by a sizeable hill. The white population
were on the east of the hill next to Lake Worth. The colored population
were on the west side of the hill next to Clear Lake which was well named
for it was a large, clear, fresh water lake. Everybody was satisfied and
happy. In colored town they had their homes, their schools, their shops
and lodge halls, and their churches. The cemeteries, however, both white
and colored, lay south of town and the route was down Poinsettia Street
right by our house. Often when we heard a colored funeral coming we
stopped whatever we were doing and observed them. The "Poinciana
Waiters' Band," a group of colored men who were waiters during the
"Season," usually led them with measured tread and solem hymnal music.
Their playing was superb and well worth listening to. The procession
stretched out for blocks and was usually very impressive. One old colored
man stopped in front of our house one day to observe with hat in hand
such a cortege go by. After they had passed he stood looking after them
as if spellbound for a few minutes then shaking his head, he remarked to
no one in particular:

"Umph! Umph! I wouldn't mind dying if
I could have a funeral like that!"
But coming back from the cemetery the band played the liveliest ragtime
music in their repertoire, and everything was gaiety and light. It seemed to
be the custom.

THE ROYAL POINCIANA
When Mr. Henry M. Flagler had extended his Florida East Coast Railway
to West Palm Beach, and then on to Miami, he practically "made" both
towns, as well as many others which sprang up along the right of way. But
he did more for Palm Beach. He built two luxurious hotels there: The
Royal Poinciana and The Breakers. Miami had but one Flagler hotel at
the time: The Royal Palm. Before he died, Mr. Flagler was to realize
his dream of extending his railroad clear on down to Key West, after
having overcome many grave engineering problems as well as natural set-
backs in the way of hurricanes among other things, thus providing one of
the most unique travel experiences one could imagine, that is, going to sea
by railroad train. One span of the "Overseas Railroad" was so long as it
reached from Key to Key that travelers on the train were entirely out of
sight of land and could look down from their coach windows into the clear
depths of the sea on the one side or the Gulf on the other and view the
fishes swimming about, and not to be able to see the roadbed gave one the

DORA DOSTER UTZ

frightening sensation of a dream fantasy, that is, of skimming over the
ocean on a railroad train.
Mr. Flagler loved and preferred Palm Beach. He sought to keep it
exclusive and quietly elegant with an appeal to the old, settled families
of inherited wealth like the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, the
J. Pierpont Morgans, the Wanamakers and the Scribners. Even our town,
the commercial area of the resort, was not as large and bustling as Miami.
We liked it that way. So did Mr. Flagler. He built his handsome mansion
within a stone's throw of the facade of The Royal Poinciana on a little
point of land extending out into Lake Worth. He called it "Whitehall" and,
although he had a high ornamental iron fence around the grounds, the
uprights were spaced far enough apart that they did not obstruct the view
of the exquisite grounds nor the beauty of the residence.
Mr. Flagler had also donated a large acreage to the town for a new
cemetery. It too had an ornamental iron gateway and was partially fenced.
Over the gateway was inscribed the comforting thought:
"That Which Is So Universal
As Death Must Be A Blessing."
Mr. Flagler evidently wished to live and die in this home of his choice.
He did die at Whitehall but his burial took place elsewhere.
The two splendid Flagler hotels at Palm Beach around the turn of the
century were in their heyday. The Royal Poinciana faced beautiful Lake
Worth and was said to be the largest wooden hotel in the world. The
Breakers, smaller but likewise luxurious, faced the Atlantic Ocean. Both
hotels attracted the wealth and fashion from all parts of the United States
as well as foreign countries. The Royal Poinciana was named for the exotic
flame tree of the tropics. It was razed by fire many years later and was
never rebuilt, but its sister hotel, The Breakers, which was burned while
we still lived there in West Palm Beach, was rebuilt and is standing today
as beautiful as ever. [1956]

Winter visitors came by the hundreds for the gay season which lasted
but six short weeks, from just after Christmas through Washington's Birth-
da. The Florida East Coast trains backed across a long trestle over beauti-
ful Lake Worth right up to the north entrance of The Royal Poinciana so
that the elite might descend with the least possible inconvenience. Many
visitors arrived in their yachts. The lake became dotted with sleek, shiny,
handsome craft of all kinds from sea-going yachts to smaller cabin cruisers
which had come down the rivers, inland. [Inland Waterway]
When the season approached our little town took on new life. Many

TEQUESTA

town folk prepared to accommodate some of the winter visitors. Smaller
hotels on the town side of the lake like The Palms, The Seminole and The
Holland House which had been closed all summer now refurbished their
appointments and opened their doors to visitors who preferred to enjoy a
less expensive and more casual vacation away from the glitter and pomp
of the great hotels.

Our servants often took "French leave" of us, to become waiters, wheel-
chair boys, or caddies for the wealthy people, who tipped them out-
rageously. Our laundresses, cooks and housemaids sought jobs as nurse-
maids for the children of the visitors, ladies' maids, or work of some sort
or another in the fabulous atmosphere of "The Gold Coast." Who could
blame them? In other Southern states quite often servants were released
at cotton picking time to which they looked forward not only as a sociable
assemblage but as a means of earning extra Christmas money. So the
winter season here at Palm Beach was "cotton picking time" for our color-
ed population, as indeed it was for most town folks as well. They returned
at the end of the season with pockets well lined and took over their normal
lives again as did all of us.

Many people of prominence owned "cottages" which indeed were man-
sions on large estates along the ocean or lake front at Palm Beach and
these gentry habitually spent their winters there. The famous actor, Joseph
Jefferson, was one of these. In his wheelchair, pedaled by his valet, he was
a familiar figure on the streets of West Palm Beach. He had become so
renowned for his portrayal of the character of Rip Van Winkle, that he
practically was "Old Rip" himself. At one time our parents secured his
consent to give a reading of his famous character before the school children
of West Palm Beach. The day was set and the time, but unfortunately Mr.
Jefferson was taken ill and could not fulfill his promise to his disappoint-
ment as well as ours. A little anecdote was told of Mr. Jefferson in con-
nection with one of his wheelchair trips into town. He went into the bank
to cash a check. The young teller was new to our town and did not im-
mediately recognize Mr. Jefferson, nor his name on the check. He told Mr.
Jefferson that he would have to be identified. Whereupon, Mr. Jefferson,
assuming the tone of voice and posture of Old Rip, drawled:
"Well, if me old dog, Snyder, was here,
he would know me."
The startled teller then instantly knew who was before him, and with
profuse apologies, cashed the check without further ado.
The tourists found much of interest and amusement at Palm Beach.

TEQUESTA

They could take a wheelchair ride every afternoon and go a different and
interesting route: the Jungle Trail, for instance, on which was the big
rubber tree, whose immensity was a marvel of nature; or, a trip to the
ostrich farm where it was amusing to watch the little colored boys ride
the huge birds which stepped around with such dignity. We had watched
them unloading a freight car of ostriches one day and noted the birds were
blindfolded with a hood over their heads. We were told it was the only way
to manage them, and if one of them kicked you, it was comparable to the
kick of a horse. Nearly all the roads and lanes were palm lined with exotic
and exquisitely hued flowers growing between the palms.

Washington's Birthday, which marked the end of the Season, was a
particularly gala day. There were motor boat races on the Lake. The
moored craft, decorated especially for the occasion, displayed their flags,
banners and bunting in an attempt to outdo each other. On land there were
contests of all kinds. Evening brought the gigantic fireworks display which
was enhanced in splendor by the reflection of the lights and colors in the
waters of Lake Worth. The end of the evening saw the Washington's Birth-
day ball in full swing at The Royal Poinciana. The grandeur of this ball
was world renowned. The fashions and jewels displayed there would al-
most have paid the national debt. Famous orchestras were brought in to
play for this ball, as well as noted bands which gave daily concerts at the
tea hour out under the palms.

Invitations were extended to many of the town people to attend the
ball. Our father being a prominent merchant and civic leader was invited
to attend, and he and Mama dressed out in their formal attire looked
resplendent to us children as we saw them leave for the ball. Next day
their account of it was breath taking.
Occasionally two young school girls-my chum and I-were permitted
to go "across the lake," especially on cotillion days, to watch the rich boys
and girls dance the cotillion on a raised platform in the Palm Garden of
the Poinciana. We wheedled two nickels from our fathers, each bought a
big bag of candy, jumped on our bicycles, and pedalled across the long,
white pedestrian's bridge, spanning Lake Worth. Having arrived, we leaned
our "bikes" against a palm tree and took our seats on one of the benches
in the gardens, munched our candy, listened to the enchanting music, and
watched the dancers go through their numbers. We were interested and
fascinated by the new Buster Brown hair cuts many of the children wore,
as well as the Buster Brown mode of clothing. We were sure our mothers
would not hear to this new bobbed style of hair dress, but we looked down
at our shiny, long braids speculatively.

DORA DOSTER UTZ

The adults watched their offspring perform or strolled in the gardens.
The tea hour in the Palm Garden was the time of day for general mixing
and conviviality among the guests. Tea was served by white-coated waiters.
Some of the gentlemen guests wore caps, tweedy knickerbockers with
heavy golf stockings, and swung canes. Probably they had just come from
a round of golf on the Poinciana's well-manicured greens. Some were in
yachting costumes, no doubt just back from a run up to the Inlet, or
"outside" down to Miami, the Bahamas, or fishing grounds off the Florida
Keys. The ladies wore long ground length dresses, the height of fashion
in those times, full, or leg-o-mutton sleeves, big picture hats, and carried
lacy parasols which they twirled over their shoulders. As they strolled
about the gardens their curiosity was insatiable regarding the exotic flowers,
trees, and shrubs which made the Poinciana grounds a veritable paradise.
The name of each flower, shrub, or tree was printed on a small wooden
sign and stuck in the earth by it's side. The strollers would go to great
pains to read these botanical names and "Oh'd" and "Ah'd" over them
which we children thought quite amusing because they were so common-
place to us. During a lull in the dance we also would stroll about. Our
particular interest was the magnificent fountains in the gardens which
sprayed from large pools in which goldfish of every variety swam about
amid delicately colored water lilies. We glanced across the lake shore
boulevard to Whitehall and whispered to each other that it was said Mr.
Flagler had one of the finest pipe organs in the country installed there
and kept a young man organist on his payroll just to play the organ for him.
We went into the hotel itself. The high domed, palm lined rotunda was
magnificent. One stood there and looked down the long corridors on either
side to the far exits which were so remote they looked like small sunlit
orifices in the distance. We window shopped down these richly carpeted
corridors the sides of which were display windows from the fashionable
shops of the world. The merchandise to us children was likened to that
found in Ali Baba's cave, or the rich loot taken by pirate ships on the
Spanish Main. We enjoyed riding in the gilded cages which were the
elevators. It was like stepping into a jewel box to enter them. They were
heavily carpeted; the walls were lined with mirrors, and a handsome velvet
cushioned seat extended around them on three sides.
Emerging from the hotel we spent our remaining nickel on the mule-
drawn car which plied between The Poinciana and The Breakers. It was a
mile long ride one way down a beautiful avenue of tall Australian pines
with flamboyant hibiscus plants between each tree. A nickel gave us a
round trip of two miles, going and coming. This was great fun and good
for an hour's amusement.

TEQUESTA

Having decided we had done and seen all the sights, we rode back home.
Tomorrow we would play dolls under the palm trees on our side of the
lake and throw tidbits to the wild ducks which found sanctuary here every
winter. We would look across the lake at the imposing facade of The Royal
Poinciana and little realize that the spot upon which we were quietly play-
ing in a very few years would be one of the scenic drives of the ever
expanding population of this winter Eden.

By now we had become an interested, and we hoped, helpful part of our
community. Mama organized a chapter of The United Daughters of The
Confederacy there. She had been shocked to learn there was none. Sum-
mer evenings were spent on the cool verandas of friends' homes or on our
own chatting, or often with the young people picking their guitars, mando-
lins and banjoes and singing. On family of friends who used to stroll over
to our house frequently had two of the most unusual pets I ever remember
seeing. It was very amusing to see them coming down the street followed
close at heel by a little fawn and right behind him a tall long-legged crane,
strutting along with dignity. They would wait patiently all evening until
our friends were ready to go home and then follow them back as before.
Papa's friends ran him for Mayor of the town but he lost to a prominent
judge who was also a good neighbor of ours. When the election returns
were final, Mama went across the street to call on the judge's wife. Ad-
vancing with outstretched hand, and smiling face, she said:

"Congratulations, Mrs. Mayor!"
Whereupon the lady burst into tears and exclaimed:
"Oh, I did not want him to win. I
did not want him in politics."

PAPA'S STORE

Papa's store was on Clematis Avenue which is the same as Main Street
in most towns, but in West Palm Beach some fifty years ago the streets
were all named for flowers which was very appropriate to that lovely
Florida setting.

The store was on the ground floor of the Masonic Temple. On Saturday
nights which were the only nights Papa kept open-except during the
Christmas rush-we heard the Masons tramping around upstairs. On
initiation nights it was particularly noisy. Papa said the initiates were being
made to "ride the goat." We all laughed when he said that.

DORA DOSTER UTZ

Papa carried a general line of merchandise in his store: dress goods and
patterns, china, glassware, crockery, kitchen utensils and a line of hard-
ware. When the winter tourist season was over and The Royal Poinciana
and The Breakers across Lake Worth were preparing to close, barrels of
fine Haviland china, slightly damaged, were sold cheaply. Papa bought
much of this upon which he made a nice profit. Many West Palm Beach
housewives gloated over their Poinciana china which they had secured at
such reasonable prices.

In the rear of the store, Papa had his big roll-top desk and a high-backed
swivel chair to match. He also had there his safe, letter press, and some
"captain's chairs," to accommodate any friends who might drop in for an
exchange of views and a cigar. If he had to be out of town on a buying
trip or for any reason Mama came and tended the store and we children
joined her after schooL
At Chirstmas time Papa laid in a big supply of toys. For a while he
was the only merchant in town who had such a complete line of Christmas
gifts. This being so, Christmas shopping days were extremely busy ones
in the store. All the family turned to and helped, and we hired an extra
clerk or two as well. Most of the winter visitors came after Christmas, but
many wealthy people had cottages at Palm Beach which were really man-
sions and spent their winters there. Some had a genuine neighborly feeling
for the town and often came into the store to chat with Papa who was
president of the Board of Trade and The Utopia (Social) Club, and had
a hand in many civic enterprises.

One year some weeks before Christmas a wealthy prominent gentleman
who had a cottage at Palm Beach and spent his winters there conceived the
idea of giving every child in West Palm Beach a Christmas present. He
enlisted Papa and Mama's help but he impressed upon them the obligation
that his name was not to be mentioned.

Mama and Papa formed a committee to call upon the school teachers of
West Palm Beach. They soon had the name of every child, white and
colored, rich and poor, who lived in town or its nearby environs. The gifts
were purchased from merchants all over town. On the night of Christmas
Eve, a large pine tree, brilliantly decorated, was lighted in the little park
by Lake Worth. The town band played Christmas music from the band-
stand and the gifts were distributed by a jolly, well-rounded Santa Claus
and his helpers. The happy faces of all the children that night must have
greatly repaid the kindly gentleman who was responsible for it all. To this
day, I do not know his name.

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With the help of an old friend of artistic ability whom he occasionally
hired to help him in the store Papa used novel ideas in window decoration.
Town folks as well as visitors watched with keen interest for his new
arrangements.
One Christmas season he decorated one of his windows with a realistic
fireplace and chimney with toys of every variety heaped about the floor.
Every afternoon just as school was letting out children passing by paused
to stare into the window as Santa came down the chimney with a fully
loaded pack. Santa was well padded, in his traditional suit of red, trimmed
in white. He had a flowing white beard and thick white hair. The mask
on his face was a very genial one. His stature was small.

Naturally! Santa was I, ten years old. Santa would hold up a toy and
point to some child in the crowd outside the window, and if the child
nodded "yes," then an unobtrusive clerk would make a note of the sort of
toy, and the child's name and address which would be a big help to shop-
ping parents, in addition to being an ingenious way of selling more
Christmas toys.
Soon some of the older children observed that I was getting out of
school a little early each afternoon. It began to be whispered around that
Santa and I were the same. So we had my chum play Santa for a while,
and I appeared outside the window, big as life, to the astonishment of the
children. Then they caught on to that too. Whereupon we asked another
girl to pinch hit while both my chum and I took stands outside the window.
It worked this time. The children were utterly nonplussed.
I remember one arrangement of Papa's window which caused a small
sensation. Many tourists from Palm Beach made trips into town especially
to see the window. The arrangement was kept intact for many weeks, to
allow every one to see it. Papa called it "A Georgia Farm." He and his
artistic clerk had formed a hilly terrain of as red soil as he could get around
town. They built tiny barns and houses to scale, and planted small trees
and crops. There was even a mill with a running stream cascading over
the mill wheel and down the hillside. The dusty miller stood in the doorway
of the building. About the farm, tiny domestic animals of various kinds
stood in natural poses. This depiction was easy for Papa, for he was reared
in a small Georgia town.
We were accustomed to having Seminoles from the Everglades come into
our store. I will always remember the frightened little thrill it gave me
when they came filing swiftly in on moccasins, the chief leading the way
and the women and children bringing up the rear. They had a particular

DORA DOSTER UTZ

wild odor by which they were recognizable even without being seen. Their
method of trading was perhaps the original of the now popular self-service.
They made a few signs and said practically nothing, but went behind the
counters and selected what they wanted. Papa stood amicably by and
watched them. The women and children huddled in a meek, silent group
and let the chief do the shopping.

If one of their black piercing eyes fell upon me I felt a self-conscious
quiver of apprehension pass over me, for I could not be sure but that my
flaming tresses were being considered for scalp exhibition purposes. I
need not have worried. It had been many, many years since the terrible
and bloody Seminole Wars, and this present chief, Billy Bowlegs (Lillian
has a picture of him), led his people in ways of peace.

When all their selections were assembled in one place, the trading began.
So much of this or that for so many skins, so much venison, or whatever
might be in demand.

One day when Mama was tending store and we children were there the
Seminoles came in. The procedure was as usual but this time a winter
visitor had quietly followed the Indians and, unobtrusive in the back-
ground, was deeply absorbed in watching their movements. Mama told us
afterward that the gentleman was none other than the famous artist
Whistler.

The only times I ever knew the store to be closed during the day were
the summer afternoon The Breakers Hotel burned, and when West Indian
hurricanes blew in from the Atlantic. The day The Breakers burned the
whole town closed up and went over the lake to see that fire.

When West Indian hurricanes blew in everybody holed up for the dura-
tion. We did not have the elaborate warning systems then that we do now,
but when the ominous red flag with black center went up from the
Weather Bureau the storm was not far behind. As the winds grew in
strength Papa and his good friend, the groceryman next door, consulted
and decided they'd best close up and try to make it home.

When the storm abated we would go down to the lake front to see what
the storm had tossed up, or torn down, and Papa would unlock his store,
check any damage that may have been done, and everybody would be
dropping into the store to talk over the ordeal of sitting out the latest
twister. There wouldn't be much shopping done, but Papa's store would
be open, as usual.

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If one could turn the kaleidoscope of memory and have all the little
rosy pieces fall precisely into pattern it would be a big help, but when one
selects a treasured piece, a dozen others come crowding into focus, so that
it is difficult to make a well-ordered pattern from so many happy and
golden days.

A few I would select, though, would be the school and Sunday School
picnics, some of these to Manalapan Beach, which was one of the early
houses of refuge built by the government as a refuge to shipwrecked
sailors. The house was empty when we used it as a beach house for don-
ning our bathing suits; the girls using the upper floor, the boys the lower.
Once some one whispered that a gruesome murder had been committed
there once and so panicked us that our teachers had a hard time getting us
to go back inside to claim our possessions for the homeward trip.
We had an excellent library, or "Reading Room" as we called it. It was
facing a dock at the edge of the lake by the little park. Part of it was built
on piling out over the water, and we could go there in the afternoons,
select a book, and sit out on the breeze-swept porch and read to our heart's
content. In this small library were all the children's classics and loved
stories, and I shall always remember gratefully that I had the privilege of
reading them in those early years. For just one penny a day, too, one could
select any book one wanted and take it home. We used to use up our
allowances in this way, becoming avid readers, to stay within our budget.
Then there were the times when the dog and pony shows came to town,
or the circus, or a street carnival. The great big circuses never came that
far south, but sometimes sent part of their attractions. However, to us they
were all marvelous and grand.
There were magic lantern shows put on in the auditorium of the Lodge
Hall; and itinerant ventriloquists and sleight of hand artists who found
their way down there and put on a performance for us.
We were always having amateur theatricals ourselves, and special gala
evenings at the Utopia Club, such as the Chinese Party, for instance. The
evening was to be strictly in the Chinese manner. For weeks ahead every-
body was making his costume to be worn that evening. Mama made
Papa's costume to represent a Chinese Mandarin. I was a barefoot Chinese
boy, with a long black pigtail and round pill box hat. My sister was a
beautiful, graceful Chinese young lady, with kimono, sash, fan, high hair
dress, slanting eyes and tiny slippers. My mother was a dignified Chinese
matron. The evening was one of the most successful gala times the Utopia
ever put on. Everybody had a time eating rice with chopsticks though!

DORA DOSTER UTZ

One more little insight into the amusements of those long ago days,
and then we will close up the album and lock it away.
It is about the Fourth of July celebrations.

SHAM BATTLES AND CROQUET
The Fourth of July at West Palm Beach soon after the turn of the
century was a welcome relief from the summer doldrums.
A few months before, another brilliant Florida Season had ended with a
flourish after Washington's Birthday. On that day which was the highwater
mark of the winter we had the beautiful regatta on Lake Worth, the motor
boat races, the contests of various kinds on land, and brought the exciting
Season to a close with the fabulous ball at the Royal Poinciana Hotel.
Then, like a family with company gone, we settled back in our rocking
chairs and hammocks in the cool recesses of our shady porches. We were
a little town again with the northern wealth and fashion gone.
So when the "Glorious Fourth" came around we stirred to life and
planned to celebrate the day. Shops were closed and store fronts decorated:
everyone displayed Old Glory. I remember gazing on our beautiful flag
as it undulated like a living thing in the breeze and had almost a sense of
being in the presence of Deity. I wonder how many children today feel
such reverence!

Some of our neighbors practically swathed their homes in bunting and
flags, but most of us were content to display our one beautiful emblem. We
had a fierce pride in being Americans. If our parents recalled with warmth
and affection a lost love-the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy-that
made them no less patriotic. A younger generation of American boys had
fought, shoulder to shoulder, re-united again just a few short years before
in the Spanish-American War almost at our front door. We had watched
the long troop trains go by on the Florida East Coast Railway, the youth-
ful faces crowding the windows. And we had cheered the battleships just
off shore as they steamed away for Cuba.
West Palm Beach and Miami took turns each year in having the big
celebration. One year both towns conceded the festivities to near neighbor
Delray. That year I remember the Japanese colony from Yamato thrilled
us with jujitsu demonstrations.
When it was our turn to entertain, a large crowd met the Miami special
train in the early morning. Headed by the local band, a parade escorted
them to the ball park. We decorated our bicycles for the occasion with gay

TEQUESTA

ribbons and bunting laced into the spokes of the wheels. Everyone rode
bicycles in West Palm Beach at that time and a few rode in chairs pedaled
by a Negro servant from a seat mounted in the rear. There were almost no
carriages-most horse-drawn vehicles were drays for hauling. There was,
of course, the hack which met the trains and the handsome matched pair
of black horses which drew the hearse.
The parade ended at the ball park where the big Independence Day
game was played between the towns' rival teams. There was a "Miss
Liberty," one of the pretty town girls, who was the center of envied atten-
tion; After the ball game picnic baskets were brought out, and dozens of
watermelons were cut. In the evening everyone gathered in the little park
by Lake Worth for a band concert, and patriotic speeches by local poli-
ticians, or silver-tongued orators who found it a great opportunity to bring
themselves before the public. The finale was always a huge fireworks
display.

I remember once Papa organized a fireworks spectacle to represent the
the Battle of Manila. This was wonderful. Yachts had been decorated to
resemble gunboats. There was a large fleet, Spanish as well as American,
and each boat was named for one of the ships which actually took part in
the battle, the largest yacht playing Admiral Dewey's flagship. Various
docks were "made-up" to resemble the forts of Manila Harbor. The fleet
came down the lake from north of the drawbridge which was the entrance
to the harbor. Papa had worked it all out so that each ship was placed
just as it was in the actual battle. The "guns" were skyrockets and Roman
candles and there was red fire and noise bombs galore. It was the most
elaborate pageant West Palm Beach ever had.

The evening of the Fourth before the special train left at midnight for
Miami saw many balls in progress. Some were private dances at the
Utopia Club or elsewhere. The big public ball was usually held in the Fire
Hall, with the mayor of West Palm Beach leading the grand march with
"Miss Liberty" on his arm. The music was furnished by the local Negro
band. During the Season the men were waiters at the Royal Poinciana
Hotel and so they were known by and proud of the title "The Poinciana
Waiters' Band." They played the liveliest rag-time music on occasion, but
for the ball they gave a full program of waltzes, two-steps, quadrilles and
schottishes.

One year, when it was Miami's turn to put on the celebration, we went
down on the special train and spent the day with friends. In the afternoon,
a company of veterans lately back from Cuba staged a sham battle in

DORA DOSTER UTZ

Biscayne Park. We children were told in advance that it was make believe,
and that nobody would be hurt, but the men played it so realistically with
rifles cracking and men falling that was hard not to be terrified and to
remember that the cartridges were only blanks.

In the years when it was Miami's turn to entertain some of our West
Palm Beach folk who found it inconvenient to take their families down
for the day planned their own quiet celebrations at home.

Being three little sisters we were not allowed to handle fireworks so we
watched happily as Papa who waited until after dark to increase their
effectiveness touched off the skyrockets, pinwheels, star shells and witches
fire. During the day there were sail boat races which we watched from the
shade of palm trees bordering Lake Worth or from breeze-swept pavilions
at the end of docks. Then there were bicycle races, in which the West Palm
Beach boys challenged the Lantana boys, or vice versa. Lantana was a
town a few miles south of us. The object of the race was to make the
round trip to the other town and back in the shortest possible time. Lots
of good-natured rivalry was worked up over these races.

There were also croquet matches for the young ladies who wore their
town's colors pinned to their shirtwaists and around their croquet mallets.
They played by the most rigid rules. Two hands were not allowed on the
mallet when striking the ball. One good whack had to be delivered with a
single hand to send the ball through the wickets. These were colorful
contests to which the women spectators wore their picture hats and
prettiest frocks.

Sometimes several congenial families chartered the big school launch
for a boating picnic. When school was in session the school boat and her
skipper went about the lake gathering up children, whose homes were
along the shore and brought them to school just as our school buses do
today. In the summertime the skipper and his boat were available for
charter parties.

One of the favorite places was the inlet about eight or ten miles up the
lake. At the inlet a large double-decker houseboat had been anchored in
the lake and was used as headquarters for the day. The young courting
couples with their chaperones used to enjoy dancing on the top deck of the
houseboat in the moonlight to the music of guitars, mandolins and banjos.
When Mama got down her big picnic basket and began her preparations,
we children were ecstatic. Watermelons were stowed on board the launch.
We took our bathing suits and big towels and since we all had red hair and

TEQUESTA

delicate complexions large straw hats were tied firmly under our chins.
Mama's favorite lotion of glycerin and rosewater was applied to faces and
arms. The feet were cut out of old pairs of long black stockings which
would never see the darning basket again and these we pulled up over our
arms to protect them from the sun. We did not court suntans as today's
teenagers do. In spite of all these precautions we always came home with
smarting sunburns but, oh, it was worth it!
To race along the beach, with the salt air blowing in our faces! To dig
our toes into the warm, white sand, and build sand castles, drawbridges
and moats for the sea to fill! To lie in the foamy surf and let the breakers
surge around us! To jump the rollers, and vie with each other in finding
new and different seashells! Or fish in the quiet waters of the lake from the
houseboat and know the thrill of watching, in the clear crystalline water
below, the fish come up to bite our hooks! Did ever food taste so good,
as when eaten on the beach after hours of fun and excitement! And then
that wonderful ride home by moonlight!
Yes, the Fourth of July was something very special in the Florida of
those long ago days!

This Page Blank in Original
Source Document

The Port Of Palm Beach:

The Breakers Pier

By SUE POPE BURKHARDT*

Everyone knows about the Overseas Railway which connected Key
West to the Florida mainland. But scarcely anyone ever knew that this
railway was not the first of Henry M. Flagler's ventures with "a railway
that went to sea." No one, well scarcely anyone, remembers that Palm
Beach was first established as a port back in 1896, ships sailing from the
Breakers Pier to Nassau.

It does seem strange that this bit of the history of the fabulous Flagler
era has been overlooked. The news never made big headlines and can be
found only in short paragraphs tucked away in crumbling newspapers
written in the style of that day.

One such paper, The Gazeteer, published by C. M. Gardner and C. F.
Kennedy, traces in brief items the history of the Breakers Pier and its use
as the port of Palm Beach. These items were re-printed in their "Business
Directory and Guide and History of Dade County, Fla. for 1896-97."
Palm Beach County's present port dates back only to 1915 at which
time the legislature granted a charter for its establishment as a port in
Riviera Beach. That earlier first port, the Breakers Pier, extended 1,000
feet into the Atlantic Ocean.
In extending his railway and its chain of hotels from St. Auguistine to
Palm Beach Mr. Flagler had acquired the Royal Victoria and the Colonial
hotels in Nassau and it no doubt seemed the logical step to provide easy
access to them. As is the case with most of his hotels Mr. Flagler had
built the Colonial.

Perhaps the idea for this Palm Beach-Nassau steamship line originated
as far back as 1888 when Mr. Flagler acquired the Jacksonville, Tampa
and Key West Railway. This line connected at Tocoi with steamers plying
the St. Johns River. Here passengers were met by a horse drawn railway
car for the trip to St. Augustine, and claimed it to have been a more
pleasant trip than to attempt to reach St. Augustine over land from
Jacksonville.
When Mr. Flagler announced his plan for building The Inn on the

*Sue Pope (Mrs. Henry J.) Burkhardt, former newspaper writer, has resided in West Palm
Beach since February 1921, having moved there to head the bureau of the Miami
Metropolis.

SUE POPE BURKHARDT

ocean shore east of the Hotel Royal Poinciana, already stretching its
length along the eastern shore of Lake Worth, he also announced his plan
for the building of the pier. It was from that structure, reaching out into
the ocean, that passengers alighting from the railway cars on the pier,
boarded vessels docked at its end.
The Tropical Sun of May 23, 1895, describes the railway extension as
first used to haul building supplies to The Inn. This trestle across Lake
Worth not having been completed, a large lighter, capable of ferrying five
or six loaded cars, was brought into the lake and used to ferry loaded cars
from West Palm Beach to the Poinciana Hotel docks where they were
shunted onto the short but standard guage track.

The Flagler Museum, repository of much of the history of the Flagler
era, reports that "We do not know what happened to the St. Augustine
records." The supposition is that they may have been lost in the destruction
of one of the warehouses in use when all records were kept in New York
City. Consequently items taken originally from the Gazeteer and listed in
The Guide in chronological order are the only presently available source
of the history of the pier. The Guide tells it this way:

April 18, 1895-Mr. Flagler announces his decision to build The Inn,
also a large club house. In March lumber is ferried across Lake Worth to
start building.

September 25, 1895-Contract is let to Capt. J. D. Ross for the ocean
pier. Plans include a bulkhead filled with rock at the far end of the pier,
which will also carry a railroad track.

October 19, 1895-Announcement is made of the establishment of the
Palm Beach-Nassau Steamship Line.

January 4, 1896-The steamer Northumberland to run between Palm
Beach and Nassau arrived in Jacksonville.

January 18, 1896-The Hon. Jefferson B. Browne, Collector of Customs
at Key West, arrived to open the port of Palm Beach.

The exact date of the first sailing from the Pier has not been uncovered
but early in 1896 the steamer Northumberland, taking passengers at Palm
Beach, continued down to Miami and thence to Nassau. This information
comes from notes kept by Mr. Grant Bedford, Director Emeritus of the
Flagler Museum, notes made from conversations with Mr. Flagler's personal
physician, Col. Owen Kenan.

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A call upon Mr. Tom Kenan, head of the Flagler System offices in Palm
Beach, brought out the statement that he had never heard of the pier used
as a port. He volunteered to write to Mr. Warren Smith, Mr. Flagler's private
secretary. Mr. Smith not only verified the fact but stated that Mr. Kenan's
family had made the trip frequently. This letter, written in September of
1969, just a few days before Mr. Smith's sudden death, also suggested
sources of possible information.

But even Mr. Smith had never heard of a call made at the port in 1898
by the Three Friends. This was the famous ocean going tug used by
Napoleon B. Broward, that intrepid runner of guns to Cuba during the
Spanish-American war.'

According to reminisences of local pioneer residents, who have since
passed on, each householder in the Palm Beaches very mysteriously became
the owner of a Springfield rifle to be used against the possible invasion by
a Spanish war fleet perhaps?

Research in the files of the Lake Worth Daily News reveals the disap-
pointing fact that no files exist back of the year 1899. However, search of
the files of that year show that the pier did see service connected with that
war and its aftermath.

One such item from the issue of January 24, 1899 reports that "The
signal tower near The Inn is being painted. This tower belongs to the
Flagler property but it was used last spring by the government as a signal
tower when there was thought to be a possibility of a Spanish descent on
the American coast."

"The U.S. Navy converted yacht Yankton anchored off the pier for three
hours (January 20, 1899) on the way from Newport to Santiago, Cuba.
Paymaster and boat's crew came ashore to get newspapers and notify the
Department. Besides Capt. Dyer the yacht carried 100 men and seven
guns. The party had dinner at the Poinciana."

That same month on the 31 st The News reported "The U.S. Transport
Chester stopped at Palm Beach several hours on Sunday and some of her
officers came ashore to send dispatches. The Chester was bound for
Havana and had on board a Michigan regiment of volunteers and a few
other soldiers making 1100 in all."

Frequent items name winter guests as having returned to The Inn after
visits to Nassau. Capt. Ross of Jacksonville was reported at The Inn and
described as "the man who built the pier" and "he calls at Palm Beach

72 SUE POPE BURKHARDT "; :

occasionally to see that the old ocean has not gotten the best of his
handiwork."
One item announced that "Mr. Flagler is making arrangements for the
British warship, now at Nassau, to come to Palm Beach for a short stay.
What a burst of social life there will be if they come," declared the News
on January 22, 1899.

In February Sir Gilbert T. Carter, governor of the Bahamas, was invited
to be a guest at the Washington birthday ball, and expected, said the News
writer, to come "in one of His Majesty's cruisers now in Nassau." The
U.S. cruiser Brooklyn was also expected, the News predicting "The oc-
casion will be socially the most notable in the history of Palm Beach."

Governor Carter did come but not in one of His Majesty's cruisers.
Instead "Mr. Flagler, accompanied by Mrs. Ashley, Miss Pomroy and Miss
Kenan" went down in his private car to Miami to meet him and his
daughter. No doubt a courtesy due to the governor, who perhaps did come
in one of His Majesty's cruisers to Miami, that being the first port of
call from Nassau.

The Washington birthday ball, held at the Royal Poinciana, was con-
sidered the height and practically the closing date for that hotel. But as
late as March 11 the Inn was still open and the steam yacht Barracuda,
owned by Edward Kelly of New York, was anchored at the pier awaiting
orders from the owner, who with his wife and daughter had already
registered at The Inn in anticipation of the yacht's arrival.

Exactly how long the pier served as the port of Palm Beach is not easy
to verify, but it is common knowledge that The Inn was enlarged and the
pier improved and even extended in 1900. It was also in 1900 that Mr.
Flagler, in a letter dated July 1, announced the combining of the Plant
Steamship line with the Florida East Coast Steamship line, the two be-
coming the property by purchase, of the Peninsular and Occidental Steam-
ship Line operating between Miami, Port Tampa, Nassau and Key West.2

The Flagler fleet consisted of 25 ships, the St. Lucie being the first pur-
chased and considered his flagship. According to Mr. Bedford "The
St. Lucie was the first of Flagler's steamers to reach Palm Beach, the first
to reach Miami, and the first to take Mr. Flagler and his party to the
Florida Keys." It was wrecked in the hurricane of 1906 with the loss of
21 lives. Mr. Bedford considers it important to correct a confusion between
the St. Lucie and an earlier boat called the Santa Lucia. The latter came

TEQUESTA

into Lake Worth from the Indian River in the summer of 1894, the St.
Lucie being acquired much later.
Some speculation concerning the pier sets the date for its termination as
a port as 1901 at which time Whitehall, the home which Mr. Flagler built
for his bride, Mary Lily Kenan, was constructed. The site chosen for the
mansion lay to the south of the original tracks which carried guests to the
two hotels and to the pier. The noise and cinders of the trains of that day
were objectionable.

Consequently the tracks were moved to the north of the Royal Poin-
ciana, a move which also necessitated the moving of the railroad trestle
itself. From the new location the trains still carried guests to the two hotels
and in addition sidings were added to accommodate private cars of the
guests. But no more trains went onto the pier.

Another suggested date for the end of the pier's use as a port is 1904,
the time when actual building of the railway to Key West was begun. The
railroad was already in operation as far south as Homestead, having
reached there in 1903 to tap the rich farming section below Miami.?
But Mr. Bedford's notes show that even then some of that fleet of 25
ships carried guests to Nassau and others men and supplies to the Keys.
Perhaps the actual sailings were from Miami however as items gleaned
from The News of 1903 tell of guests going down to Miami for a trip to
Nassau.
Other items of the 1903 hotel season tell of private yachts anchoring
opposite the "new steel pier" and guests coming ashore in launches. The
steel referred to being the steel pilings used to repair the pier following
destruction by hurricane of the original bulkhead.

One such visitor on January 18 was Admiral Dewey's flagship, the
Mayflower, recognized first by its blue and white flags and the ship's
signals in which the Admiral asked: "Report my ship off the southeast
coast of Florida." Capt. George E. Andrews, in charge of the Breakers
pool, being familiar with the flag code, relayed the message to the hotel.
In a letter of thanks sent to Mr. Leland Sperry, manager of the Breakers,
Admiral Dewey apologized explaining "the sea too heavy to make a
landing."

An article on Mr. Flagler appearing in the 1903 Souvenir Edition of
the News merely says: "In 1896 the railway was extended to Miami. Next
the steamship line from Florida to Nassau was removed from Palm Beach
to Miami, and lines established to Key West and Havana." From that item

SUE POPE BURKHARDT

it could be presumed that by 1903 sailings from the pier had been dis-
continued.
This writer opts for the year 1902 for its discontinuance. That was the
year in which the Flaglers moved into their new home. Any mention of the
pier in The News was devoted to the kind and size of the fish being caught
with special emphasis on sharks; and in the January 31st edition there ap-
pears a photograph labelled "Miami harbor and elegant ships of the P. and
0. Steamship Co. at anchor in Miami harbor."
The railway to Key West is now a motor road, but the Breakers pier is
history only. Having been partially destroyed in the hurricane of 1928
which centered over the Palm Beaches, it was demolished a year or two
later.

IVerified by Henry J. Burkhardt, a small boy at that time.
2Letter on display in the Railroad Room of the Museum.
3The Story of a Pioneer, booklet published by the Florida East Coast Railway.

James M. Jackson, Jr.

Miami's First Physician*

by WILLIAM M. STRAIGHT, M.D.

In the 1890's Florida's leading industry was the growing of citrus. The
fall of 1894 promised a bumper crop, but on December 24, and again on
December 28 freezing weather swept over the state with"light frost temper-
atures even to Key West."' Then the weather warmed and the sap rose
again in the trees. On Feb. 6, 1895, freezing weather again blanketed the
state. This time not only were the leaves and fruit destroyed, but the sap
laden trees themselves fell victim and over 90% of the state's citrus trees
were destroyed.

Perhaps more than any other single event of that period this freeze
spurred the development of Dade County. The fact that Miami escaped the
freeze encouraged Henry M. Flagler to build his railroad south from Lake
Worth and to erect Miami's first luxury hotel, The Royal Palm, on the
north bank of the Miami River at its mouth. This freeze was also directly
responsible for bringing to Miami the young physician, James M. Jackson,
Jr., the first physician resident within the incorporated limits of Miami.

Young Jackson was at that time in practice with his father at Bronson
in Levy County, Florida. Bronson was an up and coming town of approxi-
mately 5,000 souls on the railroad from Jacksonville to Cedar Key, the
"Mullet Express" as it was locally called. When the great freeze destroyed
the citrus industry, people left in droves as their livelihood was cut off.
The remnants could scarcely support one physician, so young Jackson
began to look for a place elsewhere. At this time he met Flagler's right-
hand man, J. R. Parrott, who offered him the position of Florida East
Coast Railroad Surgeon at the soon-to-be terminus of the railroad on
Biscayne Bay. Thus in April 1896, Jackson, leaving his wife with her
family in Bronson, set out "to look things over" at Miami.

By rail he made his way to Ft. Lauderdale, then the terminus of the
railroad, and from there he travelled aboard a small steam launch to the
Miami River. As he stepped onto the wharf at the foot of Avenue D (South
Miami Avenue), on the north bank of the river to his left was moored the
old steamboat Rockledge, once the queen of the Indian River but now

*Reprinted from The Journal of the Florida Medical Association, Vol. 59, No. 8, August
1972. Pp. 54-62. Dr. Straight is Instructor in History of Medicine, University of Miami
School of Medicine, Miami, Fla.

TEQUESTA

Captain E. E. Vail's Floating Hotel. Accommodating about 50 people it
was one of the few public hostelries available. Further up the sand road
on his left were tents, shacks, a large gospel tent which served for church
and town meetings, and the Miami Metropolis Building (southwest corner
of Miami Avenue and Southwest First Street) which housed the village's
newspaper. To his right were Adam Correll's Livery Stable, several wooden
store buildings displaying the names: A. E. Kingsley, Real Estate; Frank
T. Budge, Hardware; S. A. Belcher Co.; Salem Graham's Bakery, and
further on, the three story wooden Miami Hotel still under construction.

In less than an hour Jackson walked the length and breadth of the fledg-
ing Miami. Up Avenue D to Twelfth Street (Flagler Street), east until
Twelfth Street dwindled into a footpath that led to the bay, south past
Thirteenth Street (Southeast First Street) which boasted the Miami Hotel
and several cottages, and on to the bank of the Miami River. On the north
bank were the barracks and officers quarters of Fort Dallas, a relic of the
Seminole Wars. The fort faced a partially overgrown parade ground edged
by a dense tropical hammock. On the south bank at the river's mouth was
the home and store of Ole Man Brickell. The town's post office was in the
Brickell store and early Miami residents griped that they had to pay the
ferryman ten cents to be carried across the river and back just to get their
mail.

The town was one of unpaved dirt streets with here and there outcrop-
ping coral rock to bruise the feet or jar the wagon. Some of the business
buildings had short stretches of boardwalk as an accommodation for their
customers and to reduce the sand dragged into the store. All of the build-
ings were of frame construction and the only building graced with a coat
of paint was the Miami Metropolis Building. The people Jackson talked
with seemed friendly, but his inquiries left the impression that Miami was
an expensive place to live. Town lots sold for $100 to $1,000 depending on
location. Lots in North Miami (north of Eleventh Street-Northeast First
Street) sold for $50 to $100 but could be had "on payments." In South-
side, Mary Brickell's subdivision south of the river, lots cost about $300.

Disappointed with what he saw, Jackson made his way back to the land-
ing to inquire the next boat to Ft. Lauderdale. He was told there was no
scheduled transportation out of Miami until the train arrived and this was
expected in a few days. Resigned to staying, he found a room at the Miami
Hotel and settled down. In the ensuing days he met several of the leading
young men of the community and became impressed with their ability and
enthusiasm. He wrote his wife, "This Miami spirit is a great thing. It is

WILLIAM M. STRAIGHT, M.D.

infectious." When the first train arrived on April 15, 1896, Jackson was
there to greet it and had already decided to cast his lot with the young
town. When on July 28, 1896, the city was incorporated, Jackson was the
sole physician living in the city.

MEDICAL TRAINING

James Mary Jackson, Jr. was born the only child of James Jackson and
Mary Glenn Shands at White Sulphur Springs, Florida, on March 10, 1866.
His parents were from Chester County, South Carolina. A year or two
after his birth they moved to Bronson where his father engaged in the
practice of medicine, established a drugstore, and owned citrus groves.
After preliminary education at Bronson, Jackson entered the East Florida
Seminary then at Gainesville. The East Florida Seminary was styled as
"an ungraded public school . to prepare boys and young men for ad-
mission into university classes, or for entrance at once upon the active
duties of life."2 It was one of the forerunners of the University of Florida.
Having completed the course of study at the seminary, Jackson went on
to Emory University, then at Oxford, Georgia, where he graduated with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in 1885.

That summer when he returned to Bronson his father tried to persuade
him to take over the management of the citrus groves but Jackson hankered
to be a doctor. Furthermore he had support from his mother who felt he
was "cut out to be a doctor." Thus in the fall of 1885 his mother sewed
six $100 bills into the lining of his good coat, and he set out by train for
New York City. There he entered the Bellevue Hospital Medical College,
the first successful medical school-hospital-dispensary combination in this
country.

Life in medical school in 1885 was a bit rougher and more boisterous
than it is today. There were no specific requirements for entrance, although
most of the students had attended high school for at least a few months.
Hard drinking, heavy smoking and frolicking with women of doubtful
virtue were a point of pride among the students. Jackson had been brought
up in a strict Methodist home and neither drank nor smoked. Further he
was much too dedicated to fritter his time away with loose women. He did
join his classmates at the neighborhood beer parlor on Saturday nights and
the standard rib was for a classmate to shout in a loud voice, "a sarsaparilla
for Jackson."

Lectures were given in a stifling, dusty and dimly lit amphitheater. The

TEQUESTA

students sat on backless, wooden benches inhaling air thick with tobacco
smoke and the aroma of infrequently washed bodies. As the professor
droned through his lecture, often two or three hours long and not even
enlivened by lantern slides, the students became restless and often resorted
to whistles, catcalls, and foot stomping to break up the session. More
interesting were the outpatient surgical clinics conducted by Alexander
Mott, son of the renowned Valentine Mott. Standing majestically in his
Prince Albert with the sleeves turned back to show his fine linen cuffs,
Mott, oblivious to the new science of bacteriology, operated on one patient
after another on an old wooden physiology experiment table. On this one
he lanced an abscess, on that one he removed a wen, and on the third he
amputated a mangled finger. Between patients he wiped his scalpel on a
blood and pus stained cloth and placed it between his lips as he dressed
the wound. When sutures or ligatures were called for, he selected one from
several waxed linen threads which he kept in the buttonhole of his lapel.3
The Carnegie Bacteriology Laboratory under the direction of Edward G.
Janeway had opened at Bellevue the year prior to Jackson's matriculation,
but Mott considered this an unproven theory and a nuisance. However,
not all Jackson's teachers took this attitude for William T. Lusk, Professor
of Obstetrics and Gynecology, was an enthusiastic follower of Lister and
had lectured on the germ theory of disease as early as 1876.4

At the end of his first year Jackson returned to Florida and successfully
passed the Florida State Board Medical Examination. Now his father in-
sisted that he settle down to practice in Bronson and stop this unnecessary
drain on the family's economic resources. Jackson had other plans; he
wanted the M.D. degree and this required another year of study. With the
financial support of his mother, he returned to Bellevue that fall and gradu-
ated the following spring. Now a full-fledged M.D. he returned to Bronson
and engaged in medical practice with his father until the fateful freeze.

In the Proceedings of the Florida Medical Association for 1892, pages
119-123, appears his first and only scientific paper, "Relation of Phosphate
Mines to Health of the Operatives and Surrounding Country." In this short
paper the young physician speculates on the possible production of kidney
trouble by the drinking of phosphate laden waters and exposure of the
kidney region to the direct rays of the sun by workers in phosphate mines.
He also suggests that abandoned phosphate pits filled with water breed
malaria. He does not mention mosquitoes although several people had
previously suggested that mosquitoes might transmit malaria. It was five
years later after Jackson's paper that Ronald Ross unequivocally demon-
strated the mosquito transmission of malaria.

WILLIAM M. STRAIGHT, M.D.

MARRIAGE AND PRACTICE

At half past nine on the morning of Oct. 3, 1894, in the Methodist
Church of Bronson, the young doctor married his childhood sweetheart,
Ethel Barco. We cannot say what the bride wore for the Levy Times-
Democrat reporter, a man not versed in ladies' fashions, refused to attempt
a description of her dress, ". . even for the best orange grove in the
county."5 The account concludes, "They left on the first train for a tour to
New York and up the Hudson, and will touch at Washington and other
places." Their marriage was blessed with two daughters and a son: Ethel,
born April 4, 1897, and Helen, born Jan. 14, 1901. The son died soon
after birth and in the First United Methodist Church is a beautiful stained
glass window dedicated to the infant by his loving parents.

In September 1896, Jackson met his wife in Jacksonville and brought
her to Miami to take up temporary residence in the Miami Hotel. Although
the hotel did not ordinarily supply doors for guest rooms, as a special
dispensation for the newlyweds a door was found and set in place. It
could not be hung for hinges were not available in Miami at that time.
After a few weeks at the Miami Hotel they moved to a loft above a store
on the west side of Avenue D. Jan. 1, 1897, they rented the Blackman
cottage on the northwest corner of Avenue C and Eleventh Street( North-
east First Avenue and First Street). Of this cottage Jackson later said, "I
paid twenty-five dollars a month for that place and I had to go out of doors
to even breathe." Later that year they moved to a house on the southwest
corner of Twelfth Street and Avenue B (Flagler Street and Southeast
Second Avenue). Sitting on the porch of that house and gazing at the pine
land across the intersection, Mrs. Jackson talked the good doctor into
buying from Mrs. Tuttle the large northeast corner lot (one hundred feet
on Twelfth Street and one hundred forty feet on Avenue B) for $2,500.
Here in the summer and fall of 1899 they built a spacious house in which
they lived for about 20 years. Behind this house and fronting on Avenue B
Jackson built a small office and "surgery" in 1905. When this property was
leased in the late "teens," these two buildings were barged down the bay
a short distance and set up side by side on the present Twelfth Terrace.
There they may be seen today; the office is at 190 and the house at 186.
With the leasing of the Twelfth Street property they built their final home,
Homewood, a lovely masonry home on the bluff overlooking Biscayne Bay
at 1627 Brickell Avenue.

Jackson came to Miami as the railroad surgeon and soon after the
Royal Palm Hotel opened, Jan. 16, 1897, he became the hotel physician.

TEQUESTA

In May, 1896 he was appointed local agent for the Florida State Board of
Health and became a trusted and loyal friend of the first State Health
Officer, Dr. J. Y. Porter. In this capacity he inspected all ships that stopped
at Miami, organized the fight against epidemics such as measles, dengue
fever, smallpox and yellow fever, and he periodically issued health direc-
tives to the citizenry. In the Miami Metropolis, June 19, 1896, page 1, we
find ". . all householders and tenters must use galvanized iron slop
buckets in all closets, pour all kitchen slops and refuse in buckets-all of
which must be carried and thrown into the river . ." Later that year
Miami city ordinances were drawn up prohibiting the throwing of dead
animals, filth, or garbage into the river, bay or any watercourse on pain of
"a fine not exceeding twenty-five dollars, or be imprisoned in common jail
or calaboose not exceeding twenty days."6 It was also Jackson who organiz-
ed the Miami City Board of Health in 1914.

From the very beginning of his professional life he took an active in-
terest in organized medicine as a way to upgrade the medical care of the
people of Florida. He was a founder member of the Dade County Medical
Association and its President in 1905, 1912 and 1923. He was inaugurated
as President of the Florida Medical Association in 1905 and in his Presi-
dential Address delivered at Gainesville, April 1906, he pleads for unity
among the physicians of Florida, emphasizes the need for continuing edu-
cation, and rails against the sexual license of his day and the diseases it
spawned.7 He was an early member of the Southern Medical Association
and elected to its Presidency at the Hattiesburg, Mississippi meeting,
November 1911.8

Not only did he concern himself with the health needs of the community,
but he also took an active part in social, business and religious affairs. He
was a charter member and generous supporter of Trinity Methodist Church
(First United Methodist Church of Miami), chairman of the fund drive
for the downtown Y.M.C.A. building, chairman of the board of the
Y.M.C.A. for many years and an enthusiastic booster of Scouting for both
boys and girls. He was the first Worshipful Master of the Miami Masonic
Lodge and a founder member and first President of the Downtown Miami
Rotary Club. As a businessman his faith in Miami led to several wise
property investments and he was a major stockholder and chairman of
the board of the ill-fated Bank of Bay Biscayne. He prided himself that his
word was his bond and lost a valuable interest in a piece of property when
he accepted a "friend's" word instead of insisting upon a signed contract.
Socially, he and Mrs. Jackson were always present for the gala opening
of the Royal Palm Hotel each season and for similar functions. He was

WILLIAM M. STRAIGHT, M.D.

Fleet Surgeon of the Biscayne Bay Yacht Club but was apparently not an
avid yachtsman. Each fall for many years he returned to Bronson or
Gainesville to hunt deer with relatives and childhood friends.
Professionally, he was clearly the leader of the local medical profession.
Physicians who remember him describe him as a keen observer, careful
thinker, and man of good judgment. He was a very capable surgeon for
his day and a man of deep religious conviction. One pioneer recalls a
Sunday when he rose and asked the congregation of Trinity to pray for
the survival of a young man with a ruptured appendix whom he planned
to operate on the following day. As was the custom here at that time, he
operated with an ice collar around his neck during the summer months. He
often took atropine to reduce his sweating during operations. For many
years he wore a mustache but one day as he was operating, a hair fell from
it into the wound so he promptly shaved it off. It must be remembered that
the wearing of surgical masks was not the custom at that time.

He maintained an excellent medical library and made good use of it.
Once a year or more often, he journeyed to a medical center somewhere
in the East or Middle West for a week or more of postgraduate education.
In his President's Address to the Florida Medical Association he exhorts
his colleagues, ". . one must to be a successful physician be always a
student . ." Always receptive to new ideas, he apparently owned the first
radiographic equipment in Dade County-9
His first office in Miami was in the Miami Hotel. In December 1896, he
moved to quarters behind the Townley Brothers Drugstore on the southeast
corner of Avenue D and Twelfth Street. In late 1905 he built an office and
surgery behind his house and facing Avenue B. When he leased the Twelfth
Street property as part of the contract he acquired a lifetime, rent-free
office in the building which was erected there.

HOSPITALS
The most serious epidemic to strike the infant Miami was yellow fever
which appeared in early September 1899, in the person of a Mr. S. R.
Anderson. Jackson, the County Health Officer, quickly moved Anderson
and his family to a schooner anchored down the bay. However, 18 days
later another case appeared at the Miami Hotel, Mr. Hargrove. Then cases
began to appear on all sides and Miami was quarantined. At first the Miami
Hotel, considered already contaminated, was used to isolate the patients,
but soon it would not suffice. A public spirited citizen, W. W. Prout, at his
own expense erected a frame building, 18 x 88 feet, on property he owned

TEQUESTA

between Seventh and Eighth Streets on Avenue C (Northeast Fifth and
Fourth Streets on First Avenue). Jackson and J. Y. Porter were in charge
of this emergency hospital. This was Miami's first civilian hospital and
housed 40 patients, both black and white, and despite its cost of $1,000 it
was burned to the ground when the epidemic ended Jan. 15, 1900.10 Inci-
dentally, the Miami Hotel mysteriously caught fire and burned on Novem-
ber 16. Some suspected arson born of the fear that it was infected with
yellow fever miasmas.
In 1903 a similar pest house was hastily constructed on property bought
by the city council when smallpox broke out among waiters of the Royal
Palm Hotel. This hospital, two and one-half miles from town at the present
Northwest Seventh Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, functioned under
Jackson's administration for about two months. Later the Florida State
Board of Health constructed a more ample pest house on the same site
which functioned when needed and under Jackson's guidance from 1904
until about 1914.
The need for a civilian hospital within the city limits was recognized
early. Tourists and indigents became ill and Miami had no place where
they could be cared for. As early as 1900 Mr. Flagler erected a frame
hospital building on the corner of the present Northeast Ninth Street and
Biscayne Boulevard with the proviso that the city equip, staff and ad-
minister the hospital. The city was not able to raise the needed funds so
Flagler converted the building into an apartment house. When in December
1905, the railroad began to push south from Miami and brought into the
area large work gangs, the apartment house was reconverted to a hospital
and Jackson put in full charge. Jackson took his private patients there and
under certain circumstances other physicians were allowed to see patients
there. Sometime prior to World War I it again ceased to function as a
hospital and Jackson bought it and converted it into living quarters for
service personnel. Jackson played little role in the establishment of the
Friendly Society Hospital in 1909 on the corner of the present Northeast
Eighth Street and Biscayne Boulevard. It was this hospital that was the
forerunner of the present Jackson Memorial Hospital. However, during the
years 1916 to 1918 Jackson was an active planning committee member
and consultant for the building of the present Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Annoyed as we are by torn up streets and bridges, think what Jackson
had to tolerate as Miami struggled to become of age. As we have seen,
upon his arrival Jackson found a village of dirt streets and pothole riddled
wagon ruts. In the summer of 1896 the grading and paving of Twelfth
Street began initiating 18 months of blasting, scraping and rolling. This

WILLIAM M. STRAIGHT, M.D.

resulted in streets whose surface was powdered rock which emitted a blind-
ing glare and a choking dust. In April 1901, this nuisance was mitigated
when the city purchased a sprinkler wagon. Also in June 1896 the county
commission ordered the building of a 12 foot wide rock road to start at
the ferry landing on the south bank of the river opposite Avenue D, then
proceed to the road built by Mr. Brickell (part of the present Brickell
Avenue), then past the Punchbowl, and on to Coconut Grove. According
1898 and was a wooden bridge with a sliding draw. The bridge was at the
to John Sewell the first bridge across the Miami River appeared about
foot of Avenue G (Southwest Second Avenue)." Later roads were extend-
ed in all directions and other bridges were built culminating in the wooden
causeway built by John Collins to Miami Beach which opened for traffic
on June 12, 1913.

TRANSPORTATION
Early Jackson acquired a horse and buggy. His houseboy, King, who
lived south of Twelfth Street and west of the railroad tracks, usually drove
him on his calls. However, at night rather than send for King or hitch up
the rig himself, Jackson often rode a bicycle. On July 8, 7898, the news-
paper records that some ingrate had purloined the good doctor's bicycle
from its accustomed place beside the office door.
The first mention of an automobile in Miami appears in the Miami
Metropolis, April 5, 1901, a note under "Miami Mincemeat": "The loco-
mobile will run for the next two weeks at the same rate as hacks or car-
riages. Moonlight trips a specialty. Trips to the golf grounds and back for
25 per person." This conveyance was operated by J. C. Rice. In Novem-
ber 1903, the Metropolis notes that Mr. L. C. Oliver made the trip to
Coconut Grove and back in forty-five minutes in his "Ford Motor Com-
pany machine" with its eight horsepower motor. Some time prior to 1907,
according to Pat Railey, Jackson became Miami's third automobile owner.
It has been variously identified as a Ford Model C or a Brush. Having
made the jump to the horseless carriage, he seems to have retired his
horse and buggy.
It is likely that Jackson and family motored to the golf grounds on July
21, 1911, to see the first "aeroplane" flight at Miami. The newspaper
writer of the day gives a graphic description of the large "bi-plane" with its
powerful thirty-five horsepower engine. He describes the takeoff: ". . at
a fast rate the bi-plane glided across the green for about a hundred yards,
and then as easily as the rise of a partridge, the graceful machine went
upwards through the air."12

TEQUESTA

Then there was the problem of sewage disposal in the rapidly growing
city. As we have seen this began with Jackson's directive ordering "house-
holders and tenters" to empty their slop buckets into the river. In Decem-
ber 1896, in preparation for the opening of the Royal Palm Hotel sewer
and water lines were laid along Avenue D and down Fourteenth Street
(Southeast Second Street). In January 1902, Flagler presented the city
with a $15,000 sewer system and in 1910 this was updated by the building
of a "trunk line" system connecting with most of the old system and
emptying into Biscayne Bay "400 feet from the end of Second Street
(Northeast Tenth Street) . into a channel that carries all deposits into
the ocean .. ."13
Although most of the old residents like Jackson probably knew where
everybody of importance lived, newcomers and visitors had difficulty lo-
cating people. Therefore in October 1902, all business houses and resi-
dences were numbered. Now with proper addresses mail collecting began
on December 7, 1903. When the Miami Telephone Company began serv-
ice, Feb. 24, 1899, Jackson became the first physician subscriber. The first
electric power generator in Miami was the one installed in the Royal Palm
Hotel. Power became available to the business houses and residents of the
town first in 1899 by a contract negotiated by the city with the hotel. In
1904 the city constructed its own generator.14 Jackson's home on Twelfth
Street was one of the first private residences equipped with electricity.

The availability of electric power made possible the Miami Street Rail-
way which began operation July 25, 1906. This, Miami's first streetcar
system, initially ran east on Twelfth Street from the railroad tracks to
Avenue B, then north to Sixth Street where the depot was then located.
So sharp was the curve at Avenue B that an "old Negro employed by the
company came out and greased the track .. ." before each trip of the car.
Possibly the screeching of the wheels as the car made the tight curve along-
side his home and office ruffled Jackson's nerves and led to this greasing
procedure.

HABITS AND ILLNESS

Jackson was fussy about his dress but not fopish. In the winter he wore
dark suits, a vest and a dark hat. In summer he preferred white palm
beach suits, stiffy starched shirts (fresh morning and evening), a starched
linen wing collar, a four-in-hand pique tie with a stickpin in the knot (as
the custom then was), and white socks and shoes. An idiosyncrasy vividly
recalled by several pioneers was his stiff-brimmed, white straw, sailor hat
from which he removed the crown to provide better ventilation. Another

WILLIAM M. STRAIGHT, M.D.

element of dress which impressed his patients was the customary flower in
his lapel, often a white jasmine. He was an inveterate cigar smoker and
preferred a five cent cigar known as the "Cinco." He often referred to these
as "stinkos" and with considerable accuracy. When he entered a patient's
house it was his custom to leave the cigar resting on the porch rail or the
edge of the porch floor. Often upon his departure he would forget to re-
trieve it and you could follow Jackson's path around town by spotting
the cigar butts.

He was a man of medium height, slender build and a warm enthusiastic
disposition. He walked with a quick step and had a quick decisive mind.
Yet as he walked the streets of Miami he found time to speak a few words
to both friend and stranger. One pioneer who as a child lived near
Jackson's home recalls his facility at remembering the names of all of the
children and his willingness to talk with them when they met him on the
street. He seemed to enjoy life and was a master at telling rib-ticklers when
the occasion presented itself. He was unpretentious and equally at home
presiding over the board meeting of the Bank of Bay Biscayne or sitting
at the bedside of an indigent patient. He had but one standard of service
for all, his very best.

For a number of years Jackson suffered from indigestion. A diagnosis
of peptic ulcer disease was made and in 1922 a gastroenterostomy was per-
formed. This verified the diagnosis and relieved his symptoms. In August
1923, he developed bronchopneumonia which he attributed to wearing an
ice collar around his neck while operating. With the usual treatment he
improved but the cough would not relent. He had two or three asthmatic
attacks and lingering dyspnea. In the early winter he lost his appetite,
began to lose weight and grow weaker. In February 1924, he went to
Baltimore to consult his long-time friend, Dr. Lewellys Barker, who made
a diagnosis of Streptothrix infection of the lung after growing this fungus
from his sputum on hydrocele agar. On February 23, he was admitted to
the Johns Hopkins Hospital for intravenous mercurochrome (220) therapy.
Initially he received two injections, 64 ml. each, of V2 % Gentian Violet.
As these gave no perceptible reaction, the following day he received the
first two doses of intravenous mercurochrome 1%, 5 mig. per kilogram of
body weight. This resulted in nausa, vomiting and diarrhea. The vomitus
and stools were stained with mercurochrome. On March 3, a chest x-ray
showed a right pleural effusion and the radiologist, Dr. Walter Baetjer,
noted "tumor cannot be excluded." A thoracentesis on March 6 produced
a pint of "cloudy fluid with greenish opalescent (sic), this is probably
niercurochome."'5 At this point Jackson elected to return to Miami. Dr.

TEQUESTA

E. Clay Shaw, a urological resident, was sent to Miami to continue the
mercurochrome therapy. Jackson accepted one more treatment, then de-
cided the cure was worse than the disease and dismissed Shaw. He died
April 2, 1924 at Homewood at age 58.

All Miami went into mourning. Stores displayed his portrait draped in
black crepe. On the day of his funeral, April 4, Mayor E. C. Romfh pro-
claimed that all business houses close from eleven to one, and that the
schools let out so that the children might attend the funeral with their
parents. The services at Trinity Methodist Church were attended by more
than 900 people from all walks of life. Such greats as the silver tongued
orator, William Jennings Bryan, eulogized Jackson. John B. Reilly, Miami's
first Mayor, said of him: "He was one of the community's greatest friends
and was always ready and willing to do all he could for others. His death
is a great loss to the entire city." He is buried in the City of Miami ceme-
tery on Northeast Second Avenue at Eighteenth Street.

On April 8, 1924, a resolution of the Board of Trustees of the Miami
City Hospital was presented to the Miami City Commission at a called
meeting. This resolution requested that the name of the hospital be changed
from The Miami City Hospital to The James M. Jackson Memorial Hos-
pital.16 This resolution was unanimously adopted and the hospital carries
his name down to the present.

Explanatory Note: The Association provides several classes of member-
ship. "Sustaining" members who pay ten dollars a year make up the basic
membership. For those who wish to contribute more for the promotion of
the work of the Association other classes of membership provide the op-
portunity, and the publication of their names in the appropriate category
of membership is a means of recognition. "Patrons" pay fifteen dollars a
year, "Donors" twenty-five, "Contributors" fifty, "Sponsors" one hundred,
and "Benefactors" two hundred and fifty or more. Honorary Life Member-
ships are voted by the Board of Directors to recognize special services
to the Association.
This printed roster is made up of the names of those persons and insti-
tutions that have paid dues since September 30, 1972, Those joining after
September 30, 1973 will have their names in the 1974 roster. The symbol
** indicates founding member and the symbol indicates charter member.